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Bayelsa recorded 1,086 oil spills in seven years – NOSDRA

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The National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) said on Thursday Bayelsa State recorded 1,086 oil spills in seven years.

The Director-General of NOSDRA, Idris Musa, stated this when a delegation from Connected Development (CODE) and OXFAM visited him in Abuja on Wednesday.

He added that the oil spills were recorded between 2015 and February this year.

Musa, who lamented that Nigeria loses billions of naira daily to oil spillages, blamed the situation largely on saboteurs.

He said out of the 1,086 oil spill incidents recorded in Bayelsa, 917 were as a result of sabotage in the form of third-party breakage of pipelines with hacksaw or outright blowing up of the pipelines.

He urged communities in the state to protect oil installations and tackle pipeline vandals.

READ ALSO: Nigeria, with 4,919 oil spills in six years is most notorious country for spillage —Minister

The NOSDRA chief said: “We cannot keep running away, we recorded 1, 086 oil spills in Bayelsa between 2015 and February 2022, that is 84.4 percent; that means we need to do something. It is not about experts.

“If I came from a community for instance, and then an expert will come and aid me to break a pipeline in my community that will spill oil into my water, will I then drink it and do other domestic chores?

“We need to speak to these issues, we have done that consistently with evidence; what we call Disaster Risk Reduction programme for communities, telling them why they do not need to vandalise oil facilities.”

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