By Rajab Y. Bwengye

Africa has in the past 60 years proved to be a role model of dirty oil business. 

The entire River Nile valley from Egypt to Uganda has got oil. Other countries that have huge oil reserves include Nigeria, Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Sudan, and Libya.

In Nigeria, dirty oil extraction is pronounced in the Niger Delta. Oil extraction has destroyed community roads and oil pipelines have been put in community homesteads, a fact that has put the life of the locals at risk of oil accidents.

The soils have been destroyed.

The United Nations environmental assessment report on Ogoni land in the Niger Delta released in August 2011 confirmed the Niger Delta has been polluted by oil extraction activities to the extent that oil has penetrated further and deeper into agriculture soils and water bodies. The 14-month assessment in the over 200 oil drilling locations which examined over 5,000 medical records and engaged over 23,000 affected communities and analysed more than 4,000 samples of water from 142 ground water wells confirms that;

Pollution in the surface waters of the Niger Delta is up to a penetration of eight centimetres

The soils have been polluted up to a depth of five metres

The water bodies are coated with hydrocarbons above the 1,000 times allowed by the World Health Organisation.

Communities are dying of health complications caused by drinking water polluted with hydrocarbons. 

The report further confirms that it will take up to 30 years to clean up the polluted waters and destroyed agricultural land that will require about $1b to $100b to restore the environment.

Reports of dirty oil extraction are repeated in Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sudan. 

Southwards into Uganda, where commercial oil drilling was embarked on in 2005, the questions as to whether Ugandans will reep anything from oil are still more than the answers. Currently, oil companies are operating when the Government has not put in place a comprehensive regulatory regime that will safe guard the country’s interests. 

The writer works with NAPE-Oil Watch Uganda