THERE WILL BE NO TOMORROW IF TODAY IS DESTROYED,By Asiayei Enaibo

Niger Delta, who did this to us?

In the Niger Delta, day in, day out trees are falling, erosion caving in our lands, fishes are dying, our livelihood is threatened, the ecosystem is dead.The once greeny environment has metamorphosed into what cannot be ordinarily described.

The waters are polluted, dead bodies of fishes floating to and fro in all tides. Mothers tolled in their empty canoes of no hope of tomorrow and their graduate children depend on their empty fishing canoes. Oil companies said, “no job for the youths”. Our leaders negotiate our futures for their children only, ran away with the monies mean’t for the whole community and led the youths into perpetual poverty.

Niger Delta, who did this to us?

Oil exploration activities murdered the Earth. The earth is bleeding, when you travelled on the coastal part of Gbaramatu Kingdom and Ogulagha Kingdom, in Delta state. In as much as the trees can’t weep, we weep for them.

Our parents returned from fishing expedition, they can’t eat their own fishes anymore, crude chemical contaminated all their bodies and inside the soup, you feel the crude in the body of the fish and those who can’t bear the hunger eat the food even though it is not good for the health, is enshrined with new disease such as chronic cough and other ailments.

Niger Delta, who did this to us?

We have lost our right of environment, climate change is eminent, the danger of extinction is moving gradually to our Communities and the government is not willing to do land reclamation, oil companies are not willing for remediation. We are gradually submerging into the sea for every small drop of rain.

The mangrove swamp forest has been destroyed, and no one is taken responsibility for remediation.

In the Niger Delta region, the blessings of Oil Resources have turned out to be our Nightmare. Unemployment, joblessness, bad leadership, poverty, greed and environmental degredation has given birth to proliferation of restiveness that leads to the gate of crimes as women, children, and aged men are struggling to eat in the means of the abundance of crude oil, vandalism and oil theft bear the brunch and the environment received the aftermath effect.

They blind us with poverty, no matter the blindness of a blind man, he sees through instinct.

Save the region, safe our lives, safe the Earth we live upon, or the danger of climate change will consume us into extinction.

Land remediation and reclamation could be the only option. The case of Ogoni is a minor when you come to Delta state.

Yes, when we cry through the media and when the saviours come to save us, our men with long legs will sign the documents with their children and colony of wives and even abandon the kings. As the trees are weeping so the Kings.

Niger Delta, who did this to us?

Who taught us greed? What change of life?
When the climate change will come in full force, your houses too will also cave in not only my mother’s old canoe, we must rise to speak up before the environmental war of climate change against our lives, for there be no tomorrow if today is destroyed.

Asiayei Enaibo
The Talking Drum writes
from GbaramatuVoice Media Centre.