By Douglas Blessing, Port Harcourt
A non governmental organisation under the aegis of Media Awareness and Justice Initiative (MAJI), has organised a one-day data reporting training for civil society organisations monitoring issues surrounding multinational oil companies divestment in the Niger Delta region.
The training organised at the office of MAJI in Port Harcourt, witnessed participation of civil society groups from across the Niger Delta region.
Speaking at the programme, Onyekachi Okoro, coordinator of MAJI, said the training was organised focusing on using data to enrich the discussion around divestment.
Okoro said: “We feel divestment is very sensitive issue to the communities, civil society organisations, and these are issues surrounding environmental impact, compensation and rest of the issues around this”.
According to him, until communities understand the numerical impacts of divestment, they will be short changed, either by the multinational oil companies or by domestic oil companies.
The MAJI coordinator explained that “The awareness on the level of impacts that the communities face is of huge importance to key stakeholders so that when they are sitting on a roundtable with these multinationals, they are having their discussion based on evidence, based on facts, numbers rather than hear-say”.
On his part, Dr Prince Ekpere, Senior Programme Officer, Social Action, noted that the Niger Delta environment is heavily polluted, hence the need for the training to have an accurate impacts of the activities of the oil multinationals on the environment.
He said: “The deployment of the air quality monitors should be encouraged, so that we can have available data to compare and contrast between areas where there are heavy industrial activities and area where there no industrial activities to compare the quality of life of the people of Rivers State and the Niger Delta, and anywhere there are industrial works.
“The environment is heavily polluted, is time we use technology to know how to solve the problems. With data and deployment of this kind of air monitor equipment all over the country.
Air monitor helps to reduce the issues around air pollution, to make government sit up and understand that truly this is no longer the people talking but data showing how these things works.
“It is something that we need to bring government in to invest in it and install in certain areas because this is not just what Civil Society Organisations can do alone, because the equipment is very expensive but the government can afford it”, Ekpere added.