22-10-09 More reactions have continued to trail alleged attempts by the Federal Government to shield Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) from taking responsibility for reckless and massive oil pollution in Ogoniland.
Latest in the opposition is leading environmental watchdog, the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) who made it clear that the deal is "totally unacceptable and makes a nonsense of efforts at bringing about lasting and true peace in the Niger Delta". ERA/FoEN, reacting to reports that government has engaged the services of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) to clean Ogoniland as part of efforts to restore the Niger Delta environment, said the decision is "a mockery" of international best practice in the oil industry which requires that the polluter remediates.

The group alleges that the Director General of national Oil Spill Detection & Response Agency (NOSDRA), Dr Bamidele Ajakaiye had said, at a two-day workshop organized by the agency for Environment Editors in Lagos, that funds have been made available and that UNEP is in the process of opening an office in Port Harcourt for the exercise.
According to the environmental group, "the agency claimed it had remediated over 400 impacted sites and is gradually returning them to their natural state, while experts have been invited by government to cleanup the area around the Warri Refinery".

ERA/FoEN criticized government's invitation of UNEP to do the cleanup, saying the process of achieving genuine peace and reconciliation in the Niger Delta must not only be for the identification of problems that must be resolved, but also spot and sanction those that were responsible for such actions.
"Whose funds will be used to do the cleanup? This decision is highly disappointing and in fact is a certificate for Shell and its co-travellers in the oil industry to perpetrate more acts of environmental assault without taking responsibility. Rather than the so-called cleanup, government should be funding a comprehensive environmental audit of the Niger Delta," said ERA/FoEN executive director, Nnimmo Bassey.

Bassey frowned at what he described as " legitimization" of environmental degradation, insisting that spill figures provided by NOSDRA is a conjecture and a far cry from actual statistics as many oil spill incidents in the Niger Delta are unreported.
"It is unacceptable that government decided to take Shell's responsibility in Ogoniland and that of other polluting companies in other parts of the region. Niger Deltans demand the list of the imaginary over 400 communities that were polluted by oil companies and remediated by government."

"Sadly, nothing was mentioned about compensating impacted people or restoring their livelihoods which have been destroyed in the oil spill incidents that always blamed on community people."
"Environmental Rights Action believes that it is intrinsically wrong for a United Nations agency to play the role of a contractor to a polluter whereas they are better placed to demand that the polluter cleans up their mess. The co-opting of the United Nations into this messy situation is an abuse of our collective sensibility."