According to the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA), Bayelsa State saw 1,086 oil spills over the course of seven years.
Idris Musa, the Director-General of NOSDRA, made this statement on Wednesday during a visit from a group from Connected Development (CODE) and OXFAM.
He further stated that between 2015 and February of this year, there have been oil spills.
Musa bemoaned the fact that Nigeria loses billions of naira every day to oil spills and attributed a big portion of the problem to saboteurs.
He said that, of the 1,086 oil spill events reported in Bayelsa, 917 were the product of sabotage, such as pipelines being deliberately blown up or broken by third parties using hacksaws.
He urged communities in the state to protect oil installations and tackle pipeline vandals.
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.”
