Gas Flaring: A grave threat to health and livelihood in Niger Delta

Traveling deep into the heart of the Niger Delta typical oil producing communities you will physically experience a burning sensation on your skin as though a massive fire has been ignited all around the environment and the temperature ranges between 30-35 degrees Celsius each day.

The experiences are more or less like that of a roasted meat in an over heated oven. Frankly speaking, these communities are indeed been roasted daily by the massive flames from stacks setup by petrochemical companies located in the heart of the Niger Delta communities.

This high temperatures arises as a result of gas flares stacks used in burning off natural gases during crude oil extraction and refining processing in other to give way for the liquefied petroleum products to be refined. Some of the communities which bear most of the impacts of gas flaring are those communities located around flow stations and petrochemical refineries.

Sometimes in these communities they experience carbon soot in their environment which poses grave dangers and health threats to the inhabitants of the community most especially to the infants and children whose respiratory tracts are too tender to cope with toxic air pollution substances. That is the main reasons why, dry cough, asthma, bronchitis, and lung cancer are some of the most common respiratory diseases which are more evident in host communities in the region.

Nigeria’s Niger Delta region has been known over the years to have in abundance natural gas which comes along with crude oil during extraction, but the fact remains that the gases are not been utilized properly rather they are burnt off as gas flares thereby causing untold hardship for host communities located around these productions and refining sites.

Presently natural gas is been flared in Nigeria more than anywhere else in the world. Estimates are notoriously unreliable, but roughly 2.5 billion cubic feet of gas associated with crude oil is wasted in this way every day in. Nigeria is flaring about 40% of produced gas and re-injecting just 12% to enhance oil recovery during extraction processes.

For clearer understanding, the term Gas flaring connotes the burning of natural gas and petroleum hydrocarbons in flare stacks by upstream oil companies in oil fields during operations. Gas flaring is the singular and most common source of global warming and contributes to emissions of carbon monoxide, nitrogen(II) oxide and methane which have the propensity of causing environmental pollution and ecological disturbances or destruction.

Gas flaring has lead to series of untold hardship in host communities such as the emergence of health challenges, food shortages, and infertility among other things. Still with these impacts community women in their ignorance, still go ahead to process their local food by the side of these flare stacks because they feel the heat from the flares dries their product quicker than then heat generated from sunlight, but unknowingly to them the flares produced are very toxic in nature, containing various forms of carbon monoxides, Carbon dioxide, methane and Sulfur oxides which causes global warming and at the same time are harmful to their health.

Visiting some of these communities you will see children playing and dancing by the gas flares sites while their mothers dry up the fishes they caught from their polluted rivers and stream and others drying up their cassava flakes commonly called kpokpogari in the Niger Delta area. Amidst the heat they experience they still dry their harvest without any cares in the world of what might be the impact of the heat emitted from the flares sites because they have no other means and sources of energy supply to dry their harvest.

Women in Ogoni area as well as other Niger Delta host communities experiences various health problems such as strange heat rashes all over their body due to high temperatures, miscarriages, infertility and their young girls between the ages of 19 and 20 years experiencing early menopause, their farm land are now infertile due to lack of nutrient and excessive heat from the gas flares sites.

Gas flares impacts on Communities and food production 

Gas flares in the past 5 decades have so impacted host communities in such a way that these communities whose women preserves and process their food with the heat from gas flares experiences more health problems than those who buy their food items from other processed sources, this is due to the fact that gas flares emits various poisonous and toxic fumes which causes diverse health complications. Gases such as CO2, methane (CH4), among others are the byproducts of gas flares.

Gas flares produces the primary GHGs, CFCs, CO2 and methane (CH4) gases which causes global warming. In addition, flaring of gas rich in liquids can produce smoke, with aerosol effects that also contribute to global warming. Gas flaring causes serious respiratory diseases, cancer of the lungs and also poisons the blood stream with Carbon monoxide, and also leads to serious food security problems by drying up the soil nutrients which in turn results to stunted growths in plants .and poor crop yields due to lack of water and plants nutrients which aids proper plant growth and productivity.

It also renders men infertile as a result of excessive exposure to radiation from the gas flares by worker or community persons who live close to these flare sites. Food processing houses and factories sited close to gas flare sites should be discouraged as it is very poisonous and deadly. It does not only endanger the lives of the poor farmers and workers, it also leaves their product contaminated with toxic chemicals emitted from the flare site.

                                                                                   

We therefore strongly recommend that host community awareness campaigns should be done on a regular basis to enlighten host community people on the dangers associated with food processing around gas flare sites. The Nigerian Government should as a matter of urgency, make stringent laws and take drastic action against defaulting companies not just by payment of fines. Fines for defaulting companies should be so exorbitant so as to deter them. Furthermore the gases wasted as flares can be processed and produced into cooking/domestic gas and also they should stand by their proposed dates to stop gas flares in Nigeria as this will save lives and reduce the current heat waves in host communities in Niger Delta region. The gases flared can be converted and used as a means for power generation in other to increase the nation’s power supply in this era of epileptic power supply.

source:  http://deltanewsroom.com/?p=9535

Spiritual land grabbing

 Spiritual land grabbing By Cadmus Atake- Enade

It so nice and great to have massive land space for spiritual purposes where you commune with your maker (God) in solace and enrich yourself spiritually,  but one thing keep beating my imagination and that is the acquisition of large land for such purposes when local community people needs lands for farming purposes and they are not been given by their community leaders. 


We keep fighting and speaking against multinational corporations and government establishment claiming indigenous land space for their mining, selfish and developmental purposes yet we fail to realize that a new phase  of such land grabbing episode has emerged and it’s from the spiritual perspective. Ask me what this is I can't really say but I just believe is a new form of land grabbing where massive land is acquired by spiritual house and churches at a cheap rate for the purpose of prayer grounds and camp sites but are later turned into business ground rather than what it was initially proposed,  yet the congregation are struggling to survive.


Some have no jobs to sustain themselves and family feeding from hand to mouth yet they contribute for the upkeep of their spiritual leaders and their families because they believe that in there lies their eternal blessings.  


They give their offerings and tithe faithfully and willingly out of a cheerful heart because they know and believe that the Lord blesses a cheerful giver and sometimes they are obliged to contribute specially with various kinds of conditions attached to it.  


They become lean due to lack of food, malnutrition and hunger that prompt them into spiritual exercise of fasting and prayers yet the so called leaders and their families are fat and wallow in affluence with flashy cars and armed security men as body guards.

If I may asked were was it stated that Jesus Christ had armed body guards or security men? Am yet to find out that.

With the current emergency of acquiring massive lands majority of these churches have converted these lands to private owed business ground where they build their private mansions, schools, day care center, universities and guest houses which most times the congregation cannot afford the exuberant fees paid in these schools and guest houses.

As a Christian / believer am not judging anyone but am trying to create a scenario  where these houses of God and men of God will take up the challenges of fighting and eradicating poverty from their congregation by actually turning these massive prayer grounds or part of it into agricultural lands for food crop planting in other to alleviate the sufferings of the masses and their congregation.


In the past the church was a ground for the rescue of souls, rendering support for those in need, criticizing and addressing corruption in the nation and society but these days the church leaders are the major ones that play key roles in the politics of the nation, organizing prayer sessions for corrupt leaders who in their life time may not have visited the four walls of a church building and sometimes they even have dinners and luncheon with them rather than preaching a message of repentance and salvation to them. If asked about this they will tell you that Jesus Christ eat with scribes and the Pharisees so they can do the same.  


They have turn their places of worship into great channels and grounds for political campaigns and solidarity movement when Christ during His days destroyed the tables of the money changers and others in the temple enlightening them that His house is a place of prayer and not for money changing and den of thieves (Matthew 21:13).

The church has now become a place where the congregation is compel to vote for  particular candidates rather than the candidate of their choice, which is not suppose to be.

In the past Men of God were meek and gentle, they are always neutral in their dealings and non partisans, something totally different from what we see today “radical Christians and leaders” all in the name of the violent ones take it by force(Matthew 11:12).

     
These days Men of God now visit presidential lodges and international conferences as though they are personal assistant to the  president,some even have permanent lodge at the government guest house.

They have become so consumed by their lost and quest for material things rather than the things of God which have prompted them to acquire massive community lands for themselves all in the name of spiritual camp ground.

They no longer seek God as was commanded in Matthew 6:33, rather they seek self riches forgetting the fact that seeking God first adds every other thing to your life.

It’s high time men of of God and church leaders sit up to address the issue of poverty in the nation and in the mist of their congregation by careful thinking and sorting out a way to save humanity from extreme poverty which leads to the destruction of their souls as stated in the bible book of proverbs that “the destruction of the poor is their poverty”(proverbs 10:15).

As the bible made it known to us that the lips of the righteous feeds many,(proverbs 10:21a).


It’s high time we  as individuals, Christians and church leaders, find a possible solution to avert the menace of  poverty which is one of the root causes of all evil,corruption and social vices in our society presently.   Ensuring that our environment is conducive for living because it was not so from the beginning, God’s divine purpose for saving us is for us to save our world from all the oppressions of the enemy(Satan and his cohorts) and not to aid them in  destroying  mankind and his environment.

Think about this things and make a change for the better because you are an agent of change to your world don’t fail in this responsibility as posterity will not forgive you if you fail to do that which is right in the sight of God and men.