The National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) reported on Thursday that Bayelsa State had 1,086 oil spills in the previous seven years.
The Director-General of NOSDRA, Idris Musa, stated this when a delegation from Connected Development (CODE) and OXFAM visited him in Abuja on Wednesday.
He went on to say that the oil spills were documented between 2015 and February of this year.
Musa, who lamented that Nigeria loses billions of naira daily to oil spillages, blamed the situation largely on saboteurs.
He stated that 917 of the 1,086 oil spill incidents recorded in Bayelsa were the result of sabotage in the form of third-party pipeline breakage with a hacksaw or outright pipeline blowing up.
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.”
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