Every Gas Flare Is a Crime Scene

When oil is pumped in the Niger Delta the gas that comes up with it is burned off at the wellhead rather than captured, and Nigeria's regulator counts 162 flare sites with 213 flare points operated by 49 companies. Communities live beside them: roofs corroded by acid rain, crops failing, and a permanent orange glare instead of night. The Health of Mother Earth Foundation, the ecological think tank Nnimmo Bassey built from 2013 after his Right Livelihood Award, treats each flare as a crime scene rather than an emissions statistic — training community members in environmental surveillance so they can document what is happening to their own air, running the Sustainability Academy, and pressing for the flare-out deadlines Nigeria keeps setting and missing. Nigeria still flared around nine billion cubic metres of gas in 2025, seventh most in the world, and its flaring rose 12% in 2024 — the second largest increase globally.