The Executive Director of Optimistic Outlook, a non governmental organisation, Mr. Somi Uranta, has called on the Federal Government of Nigeria to pay reparations to the oil producing Niger Delta area for the degradation and pollution the area has suffered since oil was first discovered in commercial quantity in Oloibiri in the late 1950s. Uranta spoke in Lagos as part of activities to formally unveil his NGO. He insisted that the current condition of the area called Niger Delta has reached embarrassing situation, noting that unless the area is well taken care of, things will continue not to be well with the country.
He likened Niger Delta, which he claimed produced more than 90 per cent of the resources with which other parts of the country are developed to a woman who gives birth to twins and triplets but whose babies are taken from her while the husband is killed and the victim is brutally raped. He urged the Federal Government to pay reparations that will engineer genuine development of the area.
“The Laws of Retributive Justice, of Boomerang, of Karma, of cause and effect etc. have set in. The only solution to resolving the problems confronting the community is to do a restitution, an atonement for the mindless evils meted out to the Niger Delta,” he said.
Uranta said over $600 billion in oil wealth has been earned by the Nigerian nation from the area, leaving a despicable trail of environmental pollution, social abuses, economic disenfranchisement and even spiritual stagnation behind in Niger Delta.
“Our means of livelihood as a people have been systematically destroyed by the resultant effects of our mindless exploitation and exploration of oil in the Niger Delta. We cannot fish, we cannot farm, we cannot even sleep at night due to gas flaring. We cannot drink rainwater, because of its acidic content. We can’t even breathe in fresh air, yet the stupendous petrol dollars extracted from the soil of the South South and a few other states, are being used for the development of the entire nation, except the Niger Delta region.
This is tyranny of the majority against the minority. This is tyranny of the many against the few. This is man’s inhumanity to man.
“Crude oil has been more of a curse to the Niger Delta region than a blessing. The wheel of natural justice and equity thrives on fairness and justice and therefore, every act of inequity, unfairness and injustice must be revisited with a double penalty of the infractions,” he said.