The Federal Government of Nigeria has set up the National Oil Spillage Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA). The agency as the name implies, has the clear mandate of monitoring the coastal areas of the Niger Delta to ascertain the possibility of oil spill, degree of the spillage when it happens and consequently, initiate remediation activities for the purpose of restoring and recovering impacted sites.

Besides, the agency would also conduct checks to establish the level of integrity of the facilities used by the oil companies in their exploitation and exploration activities. Oil companies have been directed to forward to the agency details of their pipeline network, type of product conveyed by each pipeline and the times as well as source and destination of the products. Though the agency is being set up belatedly, it is also instructive that it is coming at this time when the nation has been having a Herculean task trying to manage the aftermath of oil spill.

Nigeria is a key member of OPEC, the fifth largest supplier of crude oil to the United States, the largest producer in Africa and the eight largest exporter of same in the world. This has also placed enormous pressure on the oil-producing communities due to increased seismic and sundry oil-prospecting activities in the area. Not only are the people put under pressure, the facilities particularly the pipelines are subjected to continual usage. The net effect is a spate of burst pipelines occasioning oil spills. But by far, the major cause of oil spill is vandalisation, more commonly described as "acts of sabotage" by the oil firms. For instance, in 2003 alone, Shell recorded 221 incidents of oil spills, out of which two-thirds were allegedly caused by saboteurs.

Nigeria has had the misfortune of one oil spill too many due largely to negligence on the part of the oil companies when they fail to adhere to basic international standards in facilities installation and clear acts of sabotage of oil bunkerers and miscreants. Add to that is oil waste dumping and indiscriminate gas flaring. All these coalesce to destroy the biodiversity of the affected areas leading to loss of wild life, aquatic life, soil and health degradation. In the main, the nation loses economically and socially. Sometimes, when there is a spill, it creeps and spreads to the shoreline, thus threatening both coastal and terrestrial life. The Niger-Delta region, the prime targets of the oil spills, has experienced all these and the effects are made manifest in the brackish waters of the region and the disappearance of fishes from the sea bed.

This is why the establishment of this agency is a welcome development. Worthy of note, however, is the fact that this is not the first time that government has instituted such interventionist or remediation agencies. But most times, they get subsumed in the stupor of bureaucracy. Consequently, they lose focus, essence and their core values. We hope the same fate does not befall NOSDRA. Oil spills are not a novelty. It has been since the history of oil. And it is not peculiar to Nigeria. The only difference, however, is that in other climates, response by both governments and the oil companies are usually swift.

The nuisance of oil spills has become so worrisome to the extent that it has produced ancillary companies specialising in the manufacture of oil spill containment facilities. Such products include oil skimmers used to recover and eliminate oil spills, oil spill containment devices, emergency spill kits, crude oil sludge control systems, stem jet refrigeration, bio-remediation product distribution, chemical clearing solutions, among others.
The new agency should ensure that oil companies in Nigeria maximise the use of these facilities in their operations. This way, the chilling incidents of oil spills would be curtailed, if not eliminated.