A report published on Tuesday estimated the cost of cleaning up pollution caused by decades of oil exploitation in Bayelsa State at more than eleven billion euros.
It is in Bayelsa, in south-eastern Nigeria, that oil was first discovered in Africa in the 1950s. Shell and Eni operate there.
The report, which is the result of more than four years of research, is made up of an international panel of experts and led by a commission set up by the local government.
The state “is in the grip of a devastating human and environmental catastrophe”, the report revealed, adding that the region has become “one of the most polluted places in the world” while blaming “systemic failures”, the state and the country’s political class.
The report revealed the disastrous health consequences suffered by the entire Niger Delta. Indeed, some 1,600 blood test results from the local population show “highly toxic contamination”, and widespread “burns, lung problems, and cancer risks”.
To reduce the health risks for the people of the region, the commission suggests at least 12 billion dollars to clean up the soil and drinking water, calling on Shell and Eni, who have been exploiting the oil for decades, to pay part of this sum.