EMMANUEL NWELEDUM, Port Harcourt
The Executive Director of Kebetkache Women Development and Resource Centre, WDRC, Dr. Emem Okon, has called on journalists to intensify investigations into environmental degradation in the Niger Delta and expose hidden provisions in the Petroleum Industry Act, PIA, that most communities are unaware of.
Okon made the call in Port Harcourt while delivering the keynote address at the Dinner Night of the 2026 Correspondents’ Week, organised by the Correspondents’ Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, NUJ, and supported by Renaissance Africa Energy Company, NLNG and Kebetkache Women Development Centre.
The activist at the event with theme, “The Imperatives of Comprehensive Cleanup of the Niger Delta Environment: Role of the Media,” urged the media to move beyond routine reporting and interrogate environmental policies, oil industry practices, and government actions affecting the region.
She said journalists must expose overlooked provisions and push for urgent remediation across polluted communities in Niger Delta region.
“Environmental degradation in the Niger Delta demands urgent action. The media should take up the PIA and expose the hidden clauses, investigate and interrogate these things,” Okon said.
She stressed that the ongoing Ogoni cleanup must be extended to other polluted areas, warning against waiting for its completion before addressing wider contamination.
“The UNEP report said it will take 30 years to have the Ogoni environment restored. We don’t need to wait for 30 years. We shouldn’t wait till then before we begin to remediate other parts of the Niger Delta. It must begin now,” she said.
Okon painted a grim picture of the human cost of pollution, citing a woman in Otuabagi community who said, “if you cut my waist, you will not see blood, you will see crude oil.” She criticised plans to build a museum in Oloibiri without first addressing the environmental devastation, describing it as “another level of deception.”
She also tasked journalists with simplifying technical reports and laws for ordinary citizens, noting that many communities remain unaware of policies that directly affect them.
“Even the PIA, some of us just know about the host communities’ development scheme. There are many things in that law that communities are not aware of, and the media should begin to publicize them,” she said.
According to Okon, independent reporting is key to exposing the gap between policy and practice, and to giving voice to communities often silenced by powerful interests.
“Communities most affected are often defeated. Some of them don’t even know that they can speak out. They abstain because they know that if they speak up, they are speaking against very powerful forces like the corporations, the government.
But the media can reach the government. You can even reach the corporations, but it’s difficult for civil societies to get to those channels. So it’s your responsibility to take our voices and messages down to those corridors,” she said.
Earlier in his remarks, Chairman of the Rivers State Correspondents’ Chapel, Amaechi Okonkwo, urged journalists to hold state governments accountable for the management of ecological and derivation funds.
Okonkwo said, “While the IOCs have been blamed for pollution of the Niger Delta, the state governments have also intentionally failed to utilize the 13% derivation funds and the ecological funds, thereby contributing to underdevelopment of the region.”
He noted that despite the creation of the Ecological Fund to address the impacts of oil exploration, “in Rivers State, we cannot identify over the years, any project that is tied to the ecological fund. So it is with many of the other states.”
The Rivers Correspondents’ Chapel Chairman also called for scrutiny of the Host Community Development Trust, HCDT, created under the PIA, and urged lawmakers from oil-producing areas to direct constituency projects toward environmental remediation.
“Let us begin to demand from them, what they do with their constituency fund. Can they direct their constituency funds into ameliorating the issues of oil pollution in their immediate environment? Can they begin to demand for legislation that will demand responsive environmental practices by oil companies and even individuals in the community,” he said.
Environmental activist and Director at the Centre for Environment Media and Development Communications, Chief Constance Meju, also commended the Correspondents’ Chapel for keeping the conversation on environmental justice alive in the region.
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