Mkpoikana Udoma
20 June 2018, Sweetcrude, Port Harcourt — The Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria, ERA/FOEN have charged the National Assembly to make laws that would guarantee the environmental rights of citizens to guard against the menace of the oil spill and its devastating impact on the environment.
The environmental rights group regretted that there has been no law in the country, that adequately provides for a healthy environment as well as a law for citizens rights on their environment.
The Programme Manager of ERA/FOEN, Mr. Mike Karikpo, speaking in Port Harcourt at a two-day workshop to sensitize youth of the region on issues of environmental laws, said oil firms get away with pollution as a result of the absence of sound environmental laws in the country.
Karikpo, who was the convener of the workshop, said ERA/FoEN was determined to building a formidable youth in the region on both local and global ideas on environmental issues, with an understanding of entrepreneurship skills relating to renewable energy within their environment.
He explained that the essence of the workshop was to sensitize and introduce teenagers and youths of the region to the laws and convention of environmental issues across the globe.
Also speaking, the Lead Facilitator of the sensitization workshop, Barr. Nosa Tokunbo emphasised the need for a legal framework of environmental laws that would guarantee the rights of persons on issues of their environment.
Tokunbo tasked the Federal Government, NOSDRA, NESREA and other agencies under the Federal Ministry of Environment, to rise up to their responsibility of protecting the environment and its inhabitants.
He added that there is no law in the constitution before now that adequately provides for a healthy environment, emphasising that the law on the right of persons in their environment should be urgently enacted.
