Environmental Pollution And Health Challenges Of The Ogoni People Rivers State Nigeria.

The study investigated the possible linkages between pollutions caused by petroleum exploration and the health challenges among the people of Ogoni in Rivers State. The specific objectives were to determine the rural awareness of the people to the consequences of the pollution of their land and to find the linkages between the health challenges in the communities and the polluted environment. Employing the survey design method 12 oil bearing communities were purposively selected across the four Local Government Areas that constitute Ogoniland. 400 questionnaires were distributed as the means of data collection of which 385 were retrieved. The analyses of the questionnaires were through simple descriptive statistics methods such as frequency counts percentages and mean scores. The result revealed that the people of Ogoni are fully aware of the consequences of pollution to their health. Also the result revealed that the short term effects of pollution are now in manifestation among the people like chest pain coughing fatigue anxiety etc. and some are now suffering from the long term exposures to the polluted environment with depression skin cancer brain damage etc already visible among the people.