The Executive Director, Health of Mother Earth Foundation, (HOMEF), Nnimmo Bassey on Monday, accused the federal government and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) of enabling decades of ecological destruction in the Niger Delta through regulatory negligence and failure to hold oil companies accountable.
The environmentalist made the accusation, while delivering the keynote address at the 2026 Correspondents’ Week organised by the Correspondents’ Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, (NUJ) Rivers State Council.
Speaking on the theme: “The Imperatives of Comprehensive Cleanup of the Niger Delta Environment: Role of the Media,” the environmentalist described the Niger Delta as a region sacrificed for oil profits while government regulators allegedly looked away from widespread environmental crimes.
“Almost 70 years of crude oil and gas exploitation has left an expanding legacy of oil pollution with an equivalent of one Exxon Valdez oil spill, or 260,000 barrels of crude oil, spilled every year in the region,” Bassey said.
“This has been happening simply because our regulators allow the polluters to literally get away with murder and are more concerned about the financial returns than the health and security of the people or environment.”
He argued that Nigeria’s oil industry was built on colonial foundations that prioritised extraction and profit above human lives and environmental protection.
“We should never forget that the oil business in Nigeria began as a colonial enterprise.
Key Highlights:
- Nnimmo Bassey accused the Federal Government and Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited of enabling decades of environmental destruction in the Niger Delta through weak regulation and failure to hold oil companies accountable.
- Speaking at the 2026 Correspondents’ Week of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, Bassey said nearly 70 years of oil exploitation had caused massive pollution equivalent to an Exxon Valdez-scale spill every year in the region.
- He criticised oil firms and regulators for failing to properly decommission abandoned oil infrastructure such as pipelines, flow stations and wellheads, describing them as ongoing environmental and public health hazards.
- Bassey cited the 2021 Santa Barbara oil well blowout in Nembe, Bayelsa State, claiming independent experts estimated over 500,000 barrels of hydrocarbons were discharged, far above official industry estimates.
- The activist also accused oil companies and government agencies of frequently blaming oil spills on sabotage or community interference to avoid responsibility, compensation and accountability for equipment failures.
“This laid the foundation for ignoring the people and the environment because colonialism focused on exploitation for the benefits of the colonizer and not the victims of colonization.”
Bassey specifically criticised the continued failure of authorities and oil operators to decommission obsolete facilities across the Niger Delta, despite existing laws requiring environmental remediation and safe abandonment of unused infrastructure.
“There are wellheads, manifolds, flow stations and pipelines that ought to be decommissioned and removed from communities across the Niger Delta by the IOCs and their domestic partners.
“Nigerian law and regulation requires proper decommissioning, abandonment and removal of all unused oil facilities to best international standards, but these requirements are often ignored”, he maintained.
According to him, abandoned facilities and ageing infrastructure have become dangerous ecological hazards threatening groundwater, air quality and public health in oil-producing communities.
“These derelict facilities constitute threats to ecosystems especially regarding groundwater contamination, soil and air quality. They are time bombs that are not waiting to explode but have already been exploding,” he added.
He cited the 2021 Santa Barbara Well blowout in Nembe, Bayelsa State, as evidence of systemic negligence in Nigeria’s oil sector.
According to him, while industry estimates claimed less than 5,000 barrels were spilled during the incident, independent experts estimated that over 500,000 barrels of hydrocarbons were discharged into the environment.
Bassey also accused oil companies and government agencies of deliberately misleading the public by routinely blaming oil spills on sabotage instead of admitting infrastructure failures.
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“A major win for the oil companies is that many people now get to believe that oil spills and other pollutions in the region are caused by community people rather than failure of poorly maintained equipment.
“We have seen incidents where Joint Inspection Visits indicated that oil spills were caused by equipment failure and yet companies and sometimes government officials would claim otherwise,” the activist said.
He said the repeated attribution of spills to third-party interference had become a strategy for avoiding liability and compensation.
