The UK Minister for Africa and Middle East, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Tobias Ellwood, has pledged to support Nigeria end oil vandalism and environmental pollution in the Niger Delta.
Mr. Ellwood, who toured the creeks in Rivers, told journalists in Port Harcourt on Friday that it had become imperative to help provide solutions to some of the challenges hindering the development in the country.
He said that he was tasked by his prime minister to have a broad knowledge of the security challenge in the North East and those of oil theft which had negatively impacted the country’s economy.
The minister said that his tour of Nigeria was expected to avail him the opportunity to recognise areas for which the UK could intervene to restore security and economic stability in the country.
Mr. Ellwood, however, expressed dismay with his findings in the Niger Delta region, saying that the level of environmental degeneration was overwhelming.
He called on the government and the oil companies to take urgent steps to restore sanity to the region.
“The amount of money that is being wasted because of the oil that is being stolen, which the Nigerian people are denied because it is not going through the government, is in hundreds of millions of dollars every single year
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