The People’s Environmental Assembly scheduled for Port Harcourt on 26 September 2025 is a necessary rupture in a narrative of neglect.
The concept note issued by We The People frames the gathering as a continental and international call for ecological justice after seven decades of extraction driven devastation.
The Assembly promises to bring victims, activists and sympathetic scientists into the same room to craft a petition and a sustained campaign for accountability and remediation.
Atlantic Post reports in support and places the Assembly in recent evidence and history.
For communities of the Niger Delta the statistics are not rhetoric. Life expectancy in parts of the region has been reported at about 41 years, a figure substantially lower than the national average and a stark indicator of deep seated environmental and public health failure.
The long term health literature corroborates the lived testimony of Delta residents. Peer reviewed analyses link crude oil contamination to elevated rates of respiratory illness, cancers, liver and blood disorders, and adverse pregnancy outcomes including higher risks of infant death and congenital defects.
Local studies and systematic reviews describe pathways by which hydrocarbons enter water and food chains and by which air pollution and soot amplify respiratory disease. Those findings form part of the medical architecture behind the Assembly’s demands.
Seven decades of pipeline leaks, blowouts and poor decommissioning have also translated into lost livelihoods and collapsing food systems. Fishing yields have declined and farmland has been salinised by oil and by sea encroachment.
The 2012 floods remain a pivotal moment. That disaster displaced more than a million people in Nigeria and demonstrated the interaction between climate related extreme events and a fragile ecological economy dependent on fisheries and small scale agriculture.
Flooding since 2012 has been recurring in many Delta communities and has deprived fisherfolk and farmers of months of income while compounding food insecurity.
Accountability has been painfully inconsistent. International litigation has secured important precedents. Communities have taken oil majors to courts abroad and in some cases won the right to pursue damages.
Yet remediation on the ground has progressed slowly. Investigations and reports in recent years have documented glaring gaps in the cleanup of Ogoniland and other polluted zones and questioned the effectiveness of agencies charged with remediation.
Against a backdrop of corporate denials and the transfer of assets to local operators the result has been continued contamination and continued human cost.
That is why the Assembly matters. We The People and allied networks such as the Niger Delta Alternatives Convergence and the authors of the Niger Delta Manifesto for Socio Ecological Justice have, since 2022, worked to translate scattered local grievances into a structured agenda for redress.
The Assembly is both symbolic and practical. Symbolic because it centres victims and refuses the erasure of their testimony. Practical because it intends to produce an organised petition, to outline clear demands for remediation and reparations, and to begin forging international solidarity networks among communities harmed by hydrocarbon extraction.
What should those demands include The Assembly provides the space to refine them but three elements must be non negotiable.
First, a credible, transparent and independently audited clean up programme for the worst affected sites with measurable timelines and community oversight.
Second, health remediation and compensation packages for families suffering demonstrable harm.
Third, binding commitments from companies and government to halt practices that perpetuate pollution and to restore livelihoods through targeted economic programmes
The international dimension cannot be overstated. Transnational companies earn and repatriate profits. Their legal and financial exposure must be matched by political pressure in capital cities and in markets.
The Assembly’s aim to open dialogue with other violated peoples will strengthen campaigns for extra territorial liability, for fossil fuel company disclosures, and for stricter enforcement of environmental standards at home and abroad.
Recent litigation successes show that law can be a tool. Collective international pressure will make it harder for companies to pass the buck through localised transfers and shadowy ownership arrangements.
There will be challenges. The work of aligning hundreds of communities with different priorities and histories requires patient democratic practice. The security of activists must be guaranteed and the Assembly should insist on safe spaces for testimony and strategy. The organisers must also ensure that scientific expertise is accessible to citizens so that technical demands are not captured by technocrats or used to delay action.
Port Harcourt is an apt venue. It is the region’s economic hub and a place where the interlocking problems of urban air pollution, pipeline leaks and corporate presence are visible.
The Assembly will make it harder for politicians and corporations to ignore demands for socio ecological justice and will place those demands on a public global stage
Atlantic Post offers unambiguous support for the People’s Environmental Assembly. The gathering is a necessary step towards turning long standing grievance into organised political leverage.
It is an opportunity for victims to define the terms of repair not as charity but as justice.
We The People has framed this moment as a coming together of victims and allies to demand accountability and remediation.
If the Assembly uses its platform to secure clear commitments and to build durable transnational alliances it may mark the beginning of a different trajectory for the Niger Delta one in which the rights of people and of place matter as much as the extraction of profit.
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