By JIMITOTA ONOYUME

PORT HARCOURT — The delay in implementing recommendations of the United Nations Environment Programme, UNEP, in Ogoni, Rivers State, by the Federal Government, has been described as an open sore on the conscience of the government.

Renowned environmentalist, Mr. Nnimmo Bassey, who spoke, yesterday, in Port Harcourt, on the sidelines of a roundtable on the report, said that inaction of the government two years after the report was released, was lamentable.

Urging government at all levels to make the environment a major concern, he called on people of the Niger Delta to engage in what he termed direct peaceful actions to put pressure on the government to be alive to its responsibilities.

The environmentalist, who went round some spill sites in Ogoni with the Co-Chair, Right Livelihood Award Foundation, Dr. Monika Griefahn, said he was shocked to discover that residents had fled Goin community in Ogoni because of pollution.

Calling on government to take practical steps to implement the report, he said that what he saw in several parts of Ogoni were sign posts mounted by Hydro-Carbon Pollution and Restoration Project, HYPREP, with the inscription, ‘This is a polluted area.’

“All you see are signposts by HYPREP, saying this is a polluted area. Where do the people go to when all their communities are polluted?  Both surface and ground water is polluted. The land itself is polluted. The situation calls for emergency on environment to be declared,” he said.

He called for community participation to end oil theft, adding that government should stop opening new oil fields to save the region from reccurring oil spills.