Bayelsa State Governor, Senator Douye Diri became the subject of vitriolic attack by some irritants acting the script of their delinquent paymasters because of his brave and commendable comment on the massive Aiteo Nembe oil spill, which lasted for over 30 days.
The spill, widely reported in the media, was first noticed on November 1, and Governor Diri, one month later, visited the site after cutting short his scheduled annual leave.
At the site of the spill the governor had said: “Today appears to be a dark day for me for what I have seen. I have never seen this volume and magnitude of oil spill since I was born. The environment is devastated, the rivers, rivulets and estuaries polluted. It is almost one month now, the crude is still spilling like water. This is a terrible sight for our people”.
Diri’s remarks on the spill was similar to what the Minister of State for Environment, Sharon Ikeazor said when she compared it to the impact of the atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima during the World War II.
Surprisingly, some hypocrites, under the umbrella of Arewa Consultative Youth Movement and the Oduduwa Youth Movement went for the governor’s jugular, accusing him of politicizing the spill while they left Ikeazor unattacked for echoing the same sentiment, if not worse. Just the same way they displayed foolishness when they queried why Diri visited the site a month after the spill started, forgetting that the Minister of State for Petroleum, Chief Timipre Sylva, went there three weeks after the incident was reported.
Sadly, the misguided youths were joined by some others in the Niger Delta who were also hired to throw stones at the governor for not playing to the gallery like most people in his position would have done.
We wonder what the youths and their paymasters had expected Diri to do. Maybe dismiss the spill as a minor incident that does not deserve the kind of attention it got, thereby betraying his people, whose means of livelihood has been severely damaged.
If Diri had not called a spade a spade in the disaster that occurred in his state, where he is the Chief Executive, who else would have done that? So, accusing him of politicising and over-reacting was not only mischievous but clearly defines the mission of some powerful elements in the Niger Delta region.
We are also at a loss as to the unsolicited intervention of the strange groups in a matter that does not concern them in any way. None of the leaders or members of the so-called Arewa Consultative Youth Movement and Oduduwa Youth Movement visited the spill site to see the wastage, the pollution and environmental disaster first hand, yet they were quick to haul insults on a man that has seen it all in the Niger Delta.
Most of them, we are sure have never been to the Niger Delta, especially Bayelsa, to see and understand the sufferings of the people, caused by the exploration and exploitation activities of multinationals. So, they sat wherever they were and formed the opinion that the Nembe spill was not as monumental as Diri claimed.
What was even more annoying was when the Arewa Youths further exposed their ignorance by saying Governor Diri is not an engineer and so cannot determine the extent of the damage and the quantity of crude spilled into the river and the environment. That was premium illiteracy!
For us, we consider them as meddlesome interlopers, justifying their earnings from those who hired them to do the dirty job. But our advice to them is to use same energy or even more to draw the attention of the world to how badly banditry has affected their region. They should allow stakeholders in the Niger Delta to tackle those responsible for the environmental terrorism going on there and they in turn should go after those who have made their region suffer full blown terrorism because of killer herdsmen and notorious bandits.
We commend Diri for the steps he took in the whole situation, including sending medical relief and other consumables to the victims. We also urge him to use the instrumentality of the law, working with the Nembe people, to demand for justice in the spill, push Aiteo to immediately begin the clean-up of the site and pay the people the necessary compensation.
