Edo State governor, Adams Oshiomhole yesterday expressed worry over the effect of pipeline vandalisation on the environment in the Niger Delta region, saying there is need to avoid outbreak of preventable diseases as a result.
Oshiomole who spoke in Benin City, Edo State capital during a courtesy visit to him by the special adviser to the president and coordinator, Presidential Amnesty Programme, Brig-Gen Paul Boroh (rtd), said oil companies do not pollute their environment in developed countries and wondered why “this same company will come to Nigeria and compromise our waterways and destroy our lands and compromise the environment, creating a challenge. My fear is that, the damage we are doing to the environment today, by the time oil dries up, there will be no resources to reclaim the environment.
“I am sure if nothing is done in the next couple of years, we will begin to see some kind of strange diseases including all kind of cancers and environmentally-induced diseases that will shorten the average life span of the people that live in those affected areas.”
The governor said people should be discouraged from vandalising oil piplelines, maintaining that “everything must be done to educate and to enlighten our people to recognise that vandalising pipelines, resorting to illegal refineries in the crude way they are doing, the damage they are doing will impoverish our people for a long time and by that time, there would be no oil money to regenerate the land.
“We must encourage our young ones not to resort to violence or resort to vandalising our pipelines because that would just compound the poverty with huge health implications for our people.
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