Media Home
UN Web TV
UN PhotoUnifeed
NIGERIA / OIL DAMAGE
STORY: NIGERIA / OIL DAMAGE
TRT: 2.55
SOURCE: UNEP
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 29 JULY 2011, NAIROBI, KENYA / NOVEMBER-FEBRUARY 2010, OGONILAND, NIGERIA
FILE / NOVEMBER-FEBRUARY 2010, OGONILAND, NIGERIA
1. Wide shot, aerial view of contaminated area
2. Wide shot, landscape
3. Wide shot, UNEP assessment convoy passes through sea of oil tanker trucks
4. Wide shot, women walk through field
5. Med shot, boats on river
6. Wide shot, oil tanker trucks
29 JULY 2011, NAIROBI, KENYA
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Mounkaila Goumandakoye, Director, Regional Office for Africa, United Nations Environment Programme:
“Today UNEP is launching its Environmental Assessment Report on Ogoniland, in Nigeria. This is a region that has been very much impacted by oil contamination, social unrest.”
FILE / NOVEMBER-FEBRUARY 2010, OGONILAND, NIGERIA
8. Med shot, inspectors in inflatable boat, oil-coated mangroves
9. Med shot, barrel splashes into river
10. Zoom out, from barren, destroyed riverbank to murky water
11. Wide shot, inspectors in field
12. Various shots, soil testing
29 JULY 2011, NAIROBI, KENYA
13. SOUNDBITE (English) Mounkaila Goumandakoye, Director, Regional Office for Africa, United Nations Environment Programme:
“I think one striking element of the finding is that in the western Ogoniland, particularly in Nisisioken Ogale, families are drinking water from wells that are contaminated from benzene. And the level of benzene that we found is 900 times above the requirement mentioned by the guidelines of the World Health Organization.”
FILE / NOVEMBER-FEBRUARY 2010, OGONILAND, NIGERIA
14. Zoom out from tube dipped in water to woman and man testing water on shore
15. Tracking shot, team walks to spill site
16. Med shot, gathering soil and testing
17. Various shots, community consultations
29 JULY 2011, NAIROBI, KENYA
18. SOUNDBITE (English) Mounkaila Goumandakoye, Director, Regional Office for Africa, United Nations Environment Programme:
“We need, in fact, to find now concrete remediation actions [and] engage in a clean-up that will ensure the improvement in the livelihood of all the communities in Ogoniland and engage, in fact, this area in a sustainable development path.”
FILE / NOVEMBER-FEBRUARY 2010, OGONILAND, NIGERIA
19. Pan right, from abandoned equipment to degraded landscape
A major new independent scientific assessment carried out by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) showed that pollution from over 50 years of oil operations in the Ogoniland region in Kenya has penetrated further and deeper than many may have supposed.
The environmental restoration of Ogoniland could prove to be the world’s most wide-ranging and long term oil clean-up exercises ever undertaken if contaminated drinking water, land, rivers and important ecosystems such as mangroves are to be brought back to full, productive health.
At the request of the Nigeria’s government, UNEP undertook a scientific assessment on the nature and extent of this contamination.
SOUNDBITE (English) Mounkaila Goumandakoye, Director, Regional Office for Africa, United Nations Environment Programme:
“Today UNEP is launching its Environmental Assessment Report on Ogoniland, in Nigeria. This is a region that has been very much impacted by oil contamination, social unrest.”
If requested, UNEP is willing to remain a committed partner of the Nigerian authorities and of the Ogoni people as they address the environmental challenges ahead.
Over the past 14 months, UNEP has put in place experts at the national and international level who surveyed 200 locations and 122 kilometres of pipelines, while analyzing more than 5000 medical records. The team worked very closely with more than 23,000 people through different meetings to make sure that the process was fully participatory.
Detailed soil contamination investigations were conducted at 69 sites and altogether more than 4,000 samples were analyzed, including water taken from 142 groundwater monitoring wells drilled specifically for the study and soil extracted from 780 boreholes.
In at least ten Ogoni communities, people were drinking water contaminated with high levels of hydrocarbons. Human health is seriously threatened according to the assessment.
Some areas, which appear unaffected at the surface, were in reality severely contaminated underground and action to protect human health and reduce the risks to affected communities should occur without delay.
SOUNDBITE (English) Mounkaila Goumandakoye, Director, Regional Office for Africa, United Nations Environment Programme:
“I think one striking element of the finding is that in the western Ogoniland, particularly in Nisisioken Ogale, families are drinking water from wells that are contaminated from benzene. And the level of benzene that we found is 900 times above the requirement mentioned by the guidelines of the World Health Organization.”
UNEP scientists found an 8 cm layer of refined oil floating on the groundwater which serves the wells. This was reportedly linked to an oil spill which occurred more than six years ago.
While the report provided clear operational recommendations for addressing the widespread oil pollution across Ogoniland, UNEP recommended that the contamination in Nisisioken Ogale warranted emergency action ahead of all other remediation efforts.
While some on-the-ground results could be immediate, overall the report estimated that countering and cleaning up the pollution and catalyzing a sustainable recovery of Ogoniland could take 25 to 30 years.
SOUNDBITE (English) Mounkaila Goumandakoye, Director, Regional Office for Africa, United Nations Environment Programme:
“We need, in fact, to find now concrete remediation actions [and] engage in a clean-up that will ensure the improvement in the livelihood of all the communities in Ogoniland and engage, in fact, this area in a sustainable development path.”
This work would require the deployment of modern technology to clean up contaminated land and water, improved environmental monitoring and regulation and collaborative action between the government, the Ogoni people and the oil industry.
UNEP today (4 August) presented its report to the President of Nigeria, The Hon Goodluck Jonathan, in the Nigerian capital Abuja.
Through a combination of approaches, individual contaminated land areas in Ogoniland can be cleaned up within five years, while the restoration of heavily-impacted mangrove stands will take up to 30 years.
Download
There is no media available to download.
