Tanya Davidson
Port Harcourt — For seven decades, the South-South has produced the oil that has powered Nigeria’s economy, filled government coffers and sustained generations of political administrations. But for the communities sitting on that oil, the story has been markedly different.
They have watched their creeks turn dark, their fishing grounds disappear, their farmlands deteriorate and their mangroves decline. They have lived beside pipelines, flow stations, wellheads and other petroleum infrastructure while repeatedly demanding environmental protection, compensation and environmental restoration.
And now, after many decades of this devastation, the governors of the region appear to have discovered the problem. At their second meeting in Calabar, Cross River State, the South-South Governors’ Forum for the first time in history, placed environmental degradation among the issues requiring collective regional attention.
Bayelsa State Governor Douye Diri, who chairs the forum, said: “We cannot continue to produce the wealth while communities remain surrounded by environmental devastation.”
It was a powerful statement. But it was also an uncomfortable one. Because where have the governors been all these while?
Where was this collective outrage when communities were reporting polluted rivers and dying aquatic life? Where was the regional political pressure when oil spills repeatedly disrupted livelihoods, environmental and public health in Bayelsa, Delta, Akwa Ibom and Rivers? And why has it taken decades of environmental destruction for the political leadership of the region to speak with such clarity about the consequences of the wealth being extracted from beneath its soil and waters?
Perhaps the governors are finally awake. Or perhaps they are only beginning to notice what communities have been saying all along.
The people have lived with pollution
The environmental crisis of the Niger Delta is hardly a new discovery. For generations, residents of oil-producing communities have lived with the consequences of petroleum operations. Fishing communities have complained about polluted waterways. Farmers have reported contaminated land. Environmental rights groups have documented degraded ecosystems.
In many places, these are not abstract environmental concerns. They are questions of survival. A suitable example is the ongoing uncontrollable bubbling of toxic natural gas in Bille, Degema LGA of Rivers State, an environmental crises which has been ongoing since October 2025 till date, with no serious response from the government at all levels.
When a creek is polluted, a fisherman loses his source of income. When farmland is contaminated, a farming household loses food and revenue. When mangroves are destroyed, an entire ecosystem and the livelihoods built around it are affected.
Yet the political conversation around the region has too often concentrated on what comes out of the ground, rather than what happens to the ground afterwards. Oil revenues, derivation, federal allocations, political appointments and infrastructure have dominated regional demands.
Environmental restoration has too often been treated as a secondary issue. That imbalance is difficult to justify in a region whose environmental condition is directly connected to decades of petroleum extraction.
Ogoni remains the warning
The experience of Ogoniland provides perhaps the clearest warning of what happens when environmental damage is allowed to accumulate.
The United Nations Environment Programme’s assessment of Ogoniland documented extensive contamination associated with decades of oil operations. It found pollution affecting land and water and concluded that restoration would require a long-term effort. UNEP estimated that some areas could take 25 to 30 years to recover.
The Federal Government subsequently established the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project, HYPREP, to implement the UNEP recommendations and undertake wider remediation.
But Ogoni is not the only community with an environmental story to tell. Across the Niger Delta, pollution remains intertwined with the history of oil production. And that is why the governors’ latest declaration deserves scrutiny. They cannot simply discover environmental devastation when the consequences have been visible for decades.
The communities did not wake up to pollution in 2026. They woke up to it every morning, ever after the first major officially recorded oil spill in Nigeria occurred in 1970 at Bomu community in Ogoniland, Rivers State. The spill was from a well blowout from a Shell operated facility, spilling thousands of gallons of crude oil into surrounding farmlands and waterways, and causing widespread environmental damage.
The politics of waking up late
There is an element of political irony in the governors’ new position. The South-South has long understood the importance of speaking collectively when demanding a greater share of Nigeria’s oil wealth.
The governors continue to push for regional interests around fiscal equity, VAT, oil and gas revenues and the 13 per cent derivation principle. They are also seeking stronger infrastructure connections, regional rail, modernised seaports, investment and industrialisation.
All of these are legitimate development priorities. But there is an obvious question. What is the value of a stronger regional economy if the communities that host the economic activity remain environmentally devastated?
The governors now want the South-South to become, in Diri’s words, “Nigeria’s gas-industrial hub, West Africa’s maritime gateway and the country’s leading blue-economy zone.”
That vision cannot be built on polluted rivers and degraded coastal ecosystems. A blue economy cannot thrive where communities cannot safely depend on their waterways. A maritime gateway cannot be separated from the health of the coastline. And industrialisation cannot be called inclusive if communities bearing the environmental burden of resource extraction remain marginalised.
The cost of producing the wealth
For too long, the economic conversation around oil has been remarkably one-sided. How many barrels are produced? How much revenue is generated? How much is allocated to the states? How much investment is coming?
Those questions matter. But another question matters just as much: What does it cost the communities to produce that wealth? The answer is visible across the Niger Delta.
It can be seen in polluted waterways and degraded farmlands. It can be heard in the complaints of fishing communities whose livelihoods have been disrupted. It can be measured in the cost of restoring contaminated ecosystems.
The environmental bill for decades of oil production does not disappear simply because it is not included in the price of a barrel of crude. Someone pays it. At all times, it is the host community.
Now they are talking about cleanup
Before the South-South governors talk about cleaning up the Niger Delta, they must first address the immediate, ongoing environmental disasters by in the region. That means taking urgent action to stop the gas pollution in Bille (Degema LGA), extinguish the active gas fires and toxic fumes plaguing Ofioma-Ama Alakiri in Okrika LGA, and contain the inferno at the Ororo-1 wellhead off Awoye in Ondo State.
To be fair, the governors’ new position creates an opportunity. For perhaps the first time in this particular regional conversation, environmental restoration is being placed alongside infrastructure, maritime development, investment and industrialisation.
Diri did not merely speak about development. He directly acknowledged the contradiction between oil wealth and environmental devastation. That matters. But acknowledgement cannot be the destination. The governors must now demonstrate that their words represent more than another political statement.
The entire Niger Delta region needs coordinated pressure for the remediation of polluted communities, stronger environmental monitoring, effective spill response, protection of waterways and mangroves, and greater accountability for environmental damage from oil operators.
The governors also have considerable political leverage. They can collectively engage the Federal Government, regulators, and oil companies. They can demand greater transparency around environmental liabilities. They can insist that remediation is properly funded and independently monitored. They can hold oil companies accountable by demanding the immediate decommissioning of all abandoned oil facilities across the region.
And they can make environmental restoration a permanent item on the regional political agenda rather than something that appears in a communiqué when public attention is focused on pollution.
But who speaks for the communities?
There is another uncomfortable dimension. For decades, Niger Delta communities have been doing the complaining themselves. Women have protested. Fishermen have spoken out. Farmers have documented losses. Traditional rulers have written petitions. Communities have taken companies like Shell to court in Nigeria and in Europe. Civil society groups have investigated pollution. Environmental activists have repeatedly called for cleanup and accountability.
Yet political leaders from the region have often appeared more animated by the question of how much oil revenue the region receives than by the condition of the people living closest to the oil infrastructure. That history makes the governors’ new language difficult to celebrate without reservation.
If they are genuinely awake now, they should listen to the communities that have been awake to the crisis all along. And they should recognise that environmental justice cannot be reduced to compensation after a spill. It must include prevention, remediation, restoration, accountability and the meaningful participation of affected communities.
From meetings to action
The governors themselves appear to understand the danger of another cycle of promises. As Diri had warned during the meeting, “We cannot afford to remain a region of meetings and communiqués.” He added, “We must move beyond resolutions to implementation.”
Those words should now be applied to the environmental question. The region has had enough resolutions. Communities have had enough assurances. What they need is action.
If the governors are serious, environmental restoration should become measurable. They should be able to say which polluted areas require urgent intervention, which agencies and operators are responsible, what funding is available, what timelines apply and how communities will participate in monitoring the process.
They should also be prepared to confront politically inconvenient questions about oil companies, abandoned infrastructure and unresolved environmental liabilities. That is where the real test begins.
An uncomfortable awakening
The South-South governors may indeed be waking up to the environmental cost of oil. But they are waking up late. The communities did not have the luxury of waiting for a governors’ meeting to recognise the crisis. They have lived it.
They have fished through it, farmed through it, protested through it and, in all cases, watched their environment deteriorate while the oil economy continued to generate wealth.
So the governors’ latest declaration should be welcomed, but cautiously. It is not enough to say that communities should no longer remain surrounded by environmental devastation. The political leaders of the region must now ask why they remained surrounded by it for so long. And more importantly, they must decide whether they are prepared to use the collective political power of the South-South to change that reality.
The region is talking about a new economic future built around gas, maritime development, industrialisation, ports, rail and the blue economy. But before it can sell that future, it must confront its past.
After decades of oil pollution, the political leadership in South-South geopolitical zone of Nigeria may finally be waking up to the ruins. The real question is whether they are truly awake, and whether this time, they intend to do something about it.
