Imagine the year 2001, when the GSM was first introduced in Nigeria. Imagine again that we were told then that since we were just getting the GSM licences and trying to use the GSM phones, we should use those bulky, suitcase-looking cellular phones first and then we can move on to the Nokia 3310s of the world and hopefully one day, one day it is, we might catch up with the world on the use of multimedia phones that were coming. You will agree with me that this is ridiculous and not progressive in any manner. In fact, you will argue that the world being a global village has allowed us to be able to take advantage of the progress in other parts of the world and we should only go for the best possible phones (read technology) available in 2001, so that we could easily meet up with the technological position of the world.
That is why having monitored the oil spill remediation project being carried out in Alode-Eleme in Rivers State, I was forced to lament and shout out loud at my working desk yesterday with the same words as the title of this piece. I shouted ‘Nigeria please! Not landfarming again!’ For the sake of background information, the first wave of major oil spills started in the South-South region of Nigeria since the early 1970s. The negligence of the oil companies, notably Shell, and the illegal activities of the community members through actions involving pipeline bunkering and other oil thefts had made this environmental disaster linger for too long. The level of contamination has grown beyond measures in all these years. Many rivers, creeks and lands are black and shiny from the slick, colloidal crude oil contamination. The benzene levels, amongst other hazardous volatile organic compounds, in the air exceed the acceptable WHO levels in 100 folds. When community members dig boreholes, they pump out heavily contaminated water reeking of hydrocarbons. Some borehole water were so heavily contaminated, a friend jokingly said you could start a refinery in your home, refine the crude from such waters. This was going on for too long. Fortunately, after a long court battle between community organisations and Shell in London, The Shell Company agreed to pay $80m for some recent spills. A Dutch court also gave some farmers and fishers the right to sue Shell in its court. The Buhari government also rode on these successes and established the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) with the responsibility to supervise the clean-up of the crude oil contamination.
For someone interested in the environment of Nigeria, these new developments had been great news for many of us. It was even more impressive when we saw contractors get mobilised to site to start the remediation projects. I was excited! Unfortunately, my excitement was cut short when I saw that with this level of contamination in the region, the government agency had contracted these juicy projects as mere land farming projects. For sake of clarity, land farming is simply excavation of contaminated soil from the site of contamination into a holding unit; this is simply called ‘dig and dump’. The dumped soil is then cleaned up by using enzymes and microorganisms to degrade the pollutants in the soil. When the pollutants had been degraded to acceptable limits, the dug soils are then returned to the original sites and the craters created during excavation are filled back with healthy, safer soils. As noble as this sounds, it is the worst thing that could have happened to the progress of our environmental clean-up in Nigeria. Don’t worry, I will explain myself.
You see, the extent of contamination in the Niger Delta has been so grave and so long that we can educatively guess that the groundwater has been heavily contaminated. This means that every stratum of the geological structure of the soil, from the top soil down to the aquifers, has deposits of hydrocarbons in them. Therefore, digging and treating only the top soil (illustrated in green above) are simply like giving a counterfeit drug in a genuine packet. The problem has not been solved and as can be seen, the ability of the contaminants to spread is even aided when it hits the aquifer as it flows with the groundwater. Remediation of just the top soil using dig and dump is just a fool’s gold. The volatile organic compounds (VOCs) hazardous to human health will still find their way to the atmosphere through the airspaces in the soil. The groundwater will remain contaminated, where we still pump fuel instead of clean water with our boreholes. Natural springs will still pump out contaminated water into our creeks. Another thing the ‘dig and dump’ does not take care of are the surface waters (the rivers and creeks). If you ask me, I will think that should be the first sites that are taken care of.
Sites are more volatile. The plume from the hydrocarbon travels faster and disturbs the environment more and the importance of water on the livelihood of people cannot be overemphasised. I was therefore embarrassed when I saw that the first contractors on site were the soil ‘dug and dump’ people. What sense does it make to clean the soil in the dry season and have contaminated rivers overflow during the rainy season and wash hydrocarbons onto the soil again. It is also not rocket science to know that people need water more than anything. So, for me, HYPREP and the Nigeria government got it all wrong from the beginning.
On the soil bio-remediation that they had started, I had earlier argued that the ‘dig and dump’ method is a fool’s gold as this does not solve the environmental problem in that region of the country. What I had expected from the HYPREP was to issue out contracts that first check the extent of contamination and map the contaminants in a detailed manner and employ deep in-situ bioremediation. This cleans the whole geological strata down to the aquifers and gets rid of the contaminants once and for all. This is the standard procedure for cleaning contaminated sites especially when it involves seeping liquids like BTEX and chlorinated solvents.
I am not a person to conjure conspiracy, but the only explanation I could give for this faux pas from all agencies involved is that these contracts had been turned into a ‘cashing out’ mechanism being offered to friends that do not have technicalities to offer than the traditional land farming. The inability of their friends to offer more than land farming therefore forced them to go ahead and present this fool’s gold to the Niger Delta people. At least, they won’t see the thick black coat of oil on their soil again and they can be fooled into thinking they are now safe. But this won’t last long, because all the environmental hazards will come out in the open sooner than later again.
In the end, the first deed has been done. The contracts have been awarded. But I hope the authorities concerned will step back and do justice to the people of Niger Delta. I hope the next phase of contracts takes into consideration all these concerns.
Abdulsalam is a scientific researcher at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany
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