When oil and gas production started at the Erhoike flow station, Kokori/Orogun bloc, Delta State in 1963, just three years after the nation’s independence, the villagers, chiefly subsistence farmers, who were living in obscurity jumped with joy at the amazing gas flare which illuminated their community every night. DELTA Misplaced joy: Several decades after, one of them, a toddler at the time, now a pharmacist, Dr. Otive Igbuzor said: “We were foolishly happy that our town is not in darkness like other towns because the light from Erhoike gives us visibility. It was when I grew up that I knew it was gas flaring and its impact on the immediate environment.” The unhealthy impact was soon to be felt in other oil communities. Indeed, at several communities in Delta, Bayelsa, Rivers and Akwa Ibom states in Niger Delta region, the people are still lamenting the effect of acid rain, […]