Traditionally, the oil pollution and environmental challenges at the discovery of crude oil in 1956 at Oloibiri in present day Bayelsa state in Nigeria were accidental oil spills,oil leaks from pipelines, seepages and gas flaring.
These challenges excalated to a threat to sustainable Environment with severe oil pollution and environmental degradation that need urgent expertise and crowdsourcing solutions.
Prof Sylvester Egwu, a Howard University trained Mechanical Engineer/ CEO ,Kaku Professional Engineers Ltd in an attempt to solve these problems founded Oil Spill Conference Nigeria (OSCN) in 2012.
OSCN started to sensitize and create public awareness on the evil side of crude oil in Nigeria. The evil side is when oil spills into the Environment causing devastating impacts on human,wildlife and the Environment itself.
Over the years from 1956,oil pollution has enormous damage that has rendered oil producing communities helpless and hopeless.
The communities have been afflicted with great tragedies of loss of livelihood,fishing industry, aquatic habitas and arable farmlands. Myriads of oil spills have impacted on the health of the residents of the communities resulting in higher risks of cancer of various forms, respiratory, neurological, developmental, reproductive and other health problems.
The conferencing program focused on these challenges and ways to mitigate and ameliorate the impacts on the communities living with crude oil and exposed to its production ramifications particularly the impact on vulnerable people, youths,women, disabled people, indigenous people and other groups that need help.
Our group advocacy and campaigns against oil pollution in Nigeria have been very impactful. OSCN had two successful events in Accra ,Ghana and several
conferences in different locations in Nigeria to address oil pollution challenges.
Apart from ….to Restoration of the environment .
