Waking from the Fossil Nightmare
The Niger Delta is a territory under siege. This siege did not begin today. It didn’t begin yesterday. The siege has been on prominent from before the 15th Century. The siege has disrupted our ways of living, our communi…
Fiddling while the Planet Burns
The third report to emerge from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the span of eight months has again exposed the folly of humankind on its addiction to dirty energy sources. The report clearly shows…
Oil, Rot and Divestment
The current drive by oil companies such as Shell and ExxonMobil to divest from onshore and shallow water oil fields or even to leave completely brings up very serious issues. If oil companies drilled the Niger Delta with…
Reject Seed Colonialism in Africa
It has often been said that one of the ways to colonize a people is by dismantling or subverting their culture. This pathway is also effective for building dependency and disrupting the systems that organically secures t…
Time for a Peoples’ COP
As COP26 went on, there was a parallel Cop26coalition’s people’s summit centred on real climate and devoid of vested fossil interests. It exposed COP26 to be a Conference of Polluters, Conference of Profiteers or Confere…
COP26: Injury Time
12 years ago We were already in Injury Time Fighting for a temperature target of 1C Today Nature has been patient enough So patient not to call off the game Though the ball has left the pitch Nature has given human…
What After Oil
Good morning, distinguished participants in this Public Forum. I have the privilege of welcoming us all to this event which is organized by the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Foundation in partnership with Health of …
Coastal Communities Under Threat
Climate change and variability in Nigeria is starkly illustrated in the northern and southern regions of Nigeria by desertification and coastal erosion respectively. This is so because attention is often focussed on thes…
I will not Eat a Pesticide
Food and nutrition are key to human health. We strive to ensure that we have nutritious foods and that the seeds from which we produce these foods are free from contamination and do not pose a threat to our biodiversity.…
Okavango and the Tragedy of Fossils in Africa
The quest for profit in a predatory economic system has made it possible for humans to wilfully ignore extractivist crimes unfolding in broad daylight. A clear case is the clawing into Namibia’s Okavango Basin in search …
Niger Delta with No Fish?
Before the onslaught of six decades of unrelenting oil pollution, there was an abundance of fish species in both freshwater and marine ecosystems of the Niger Delta. Today, many of these fish species are endangered due t…
Talking About Seeds and Foods
Research has shown that although there are many policies around aspects of agriculture in Nigeria, there is no organizing policy that ties everything together. Officials work on silos and sometimes actively protect their…
Oil Field Monologues
Living in the oil field has been a disaster. And the many-tentacled roots of the ecological crisis require deep considerations. At one end is the willful irresponsibility of the oil companies who simply rake in more prof…
Emerging Technologies and the Politics of Hunger
It is not too late for Nigeria to get out of the biotech hole before it turns into a bottomless pit. The so-called guidelines for gene-editing and extreme GMOs are dangerous and needless. It is time to halt and completel…
Ecocide and Carbon Crimes
Extensive damage to the environment often amounts to literally killing the environment. Such harms impact the soil, the air and water of such the affected areas in more or less irreversible ways. A word that aptly descri…
