As part of efforts to addressing environmental challenges and ensure accuracy in monitoring of polluted sites in Rivers State and the Niger Delta region, a non governmental organisation, Media Awareness and Justice Initiative, MAJI, has trained over 100 Staff of the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) on air quality monitoring and data collection.
The training/capacity-building workshop organized by MAJI for the NOSDRA staff, brought together members of the civil society organisations and media practitioners, at zonal office of the agency in Port Harcourt.
Speaking during the event, South South Zonal Director of NOSDRA, Mr. Augustine Bello, said the training will help to enlighten officers of the agency and those that could be to affected by possible environmental pollution, and also contribute to environmental preservation.
Bello said, “The DG of NOSDRA, through the Acting DG, commends this initiative. I believe that it will help to enlighten not only officers of the agency, but those that it’s supposed to affect, and also contribute to environmental preservation.”
He added that, “The training is also an opportunity for the agency to ultimately collaborate further beyond what is happening now to see how this tool will be deployed.
Bello encouraged participants to actively embrace the training, stressing the need to share the knowledge gained with their colleagues.
“To my officers, you have learnt and packaged for yourselves. Ultimately, you need to cascade the knowledge gained here to other officers. Try to understand how the tool works, so that when the time comes for further collaboration on expanding the tool itself within the limited numbers available now, we know that NOSDRA will be involved in this particular area,” he urged.
Executive Director of MAJI, Mr. Okoro Onyekachi, said the workshop aimed to build the technical capacity of NOSDRA personnel to better manage and communicate environmental data.
He said the training will help improve the capacity of NOSDRA technical staff to simplify their data and share data in a way that it can easily be accessible by users, and and also have access to key tools and softwares where they can be easily present data to stakeholders to use when visualised, for evidence and fact based engagement and discussions across environmental and human right governance structure in the Niger Delta.
“What we are doing today is to build the capacity of NOSDRA technical Staff on data capacity, how they can be able to analyze data.
“This training will also help to build them on how to be able to clarify data, simplify data, visualize data, and also engage with key stakeholders,” Onyekachi said.
He noted that traditional methods of environmental monitoring are becoming outdated, and there is a need to adopt digital, remote tools for data collection and air quality assessment.
“Information for air quality and environmental pollution has moved beyond physical monitoring. It’s now at the position where communities, agencies, and key stakeholders start collecting data remotely using technology-based tools.
“These data collection tools were introduced to NOSDRA today, and they were taught how to access that data via remote platforms, how data can be downloaded and how it can be visualised using their various tools like excel and others,” he said.
Onyekachi while highlighting the role of data analysis in effective policy-making, added that, “As much as we have been collecting data, there’s been no data analysis. We believe that the adoption of this kind of approach will simplify data, improve evidence-based interactions with stakeholders, and ensure that agencies like NOSDRA are saddled with the kind of information needed to effectively deliver policies or recommend regulatory frameworks that will be key in environmental governance in the Niger Delta.”
