Interview with Nnimmo Bassey, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) Executive Director, Nigeria
In a riveting conversation, Nnimmo Bassey, a renowned activist, architect, poet, and pastor, delves into his transformative journey from spearheading Environmental Rights Action (ERA) to founding one of Grassroots International’s partners in Nigeria, the Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF). Bassey reflects on how historical struggles, his diverse roles, and the current political landscape shape his and HOMEF’s multifaceted approach to activism. This interview unpacks the dynamic strategies of HOMEF, the challenges facing West Africa, and the critical role of solidarity in advancing global justice. Bassey’s vision for HOMEF was driven by a desire for deeper focus and impact in environmental and social justice. Bassey discusses the influence of his upbringing and various professional roles, emphasizing how architecture, poetry, and pastoral work intertwine with his activism to foster holistic social and environmental change. He critiques the current political climate in Nigeria and West Africa, highlighting the reactionary nature of regional governments and the socio-environmental impacts of their policies. He points to both challenges and opportunities, noting the need for grassroots mobilization and political consciousness.
HOMEF’s initiatives and actions, including fossil politics, hunger politics, and the protection of community and culture, reflect a strategic shift towards addressing deeper systemic issues. Bassey outlines HOMEF’s efforts in combating fossil fuel exploitation, promoting agroecology, and combating genetic engineering, all while advocating for a just transition to sustainable practices.
The No REDD in Africa Network, a key focus for HOMEF, is re-emerging as a critical force against carbon trading and land grabs disguised as climate action. Bassey underscores the network’s role in educating and mobilizing grassroots resistance against the misleading promises of false climate solutions like REDD.
Bassey also emphasizes the power of global solidarity, arguing that effective environmental and social justice requires a united effort from workers, civil society, and communities. He envisions a collaborative approach to overcoming ecological and social challenges, highlighting the interconnectedness of justice and collective action.
This interview provides a compelling look into Bassey’s and HOMEF’s visionary work and the pressing issues of our time, calling for a reevaluation of current climate strategies and a renewed commitment to genuine, inclusive and people-led solutions.
Boaventura: Can you share with us about your journey and your transition from Environmental Rights Action (ERA) to the founding of HOMEF? What prompted this transition?
Nnimmo Bassey: I grew up in a time when liberation movements were very active in Africa. And so that influenced my knowledge and the kind of things that I paid attention to through my time in high school. And before then, while in primary school, my country had a civil war. So that also had an impact on my childhood. And then when I was in the university, I was indeed very active with literature from all kinds of struggles, from Frelimo, to ANC and SWAPO, all those groups that were circulating free literature across the continent. And then, of course, our country, Nigeria, was under military rule. So I became a part of the human rights movement the moment I stepped into my working life.
As a part of the human rights movement, we were campaigning against military dictatorship, and then looking for more humane relationships between power and the people. And I soon realized that the greater impact on the people was the abuse of their environmental rights.
While I was in the human rights movement we started the environmental rights project. And the major area of focus, where there were most prominent abuses, again, with the military involved and the oil corporations, was the Niger Delta.
For more than two decades, I led Environmental Rights Action (ERA), first as a project under a human rights group and then as an independent organization.
It got to a point where, you know, when you’ve led an organization for so many years, you begin to think of what else to do and how. You begin to think about what could be changed? I decided at that time to start a new organization, the Health of Mother Earth Foundation, with the rights of Mother Earth or Nature as a central core. That meant basically narrowing down the focus of work.
In ERA, which is the Friends of the Earth International’s member group in Nigeria, the work is quite broad and required a big team to deliver on our mandate. I really enjoyed the networking at Friends of the Earth, and because we had so many members in the network from over 70 countries, the diversity was very, very enriching. But it gets to a point where you want to narrow down the work into a smaller, sharper focus. And this is what brought HOMEF into being, focusing on fossil politics, which covers issues of impunity, issues of neocolonialism, hunger politics, and asking the deep question about the root causes of these problems. And then knowledge, which is very central. I just felt, and this is what I’m still feeling today, that this is one space that needs a lot more work, the knowledge space. Because it’s what you know and how you interpret what you know that fashions what you do. If we don’t have the right understanding, and if we don’t analyze things from our own perspective, we don’t own the narrative – it becomes a bit more difficult to find the solutions. Recently, from last year, we included community and cultureas a work focus which helps us to utilize cultural tools and impulses in our push for real solutions to climate justice, ecological justice and to holistically overturn the exploitative neocolonial system ravaging our peoples and territories.
Boaventura: You are most known as an activist, but I also know that you are a writer, an architect and also a pastor. How do you balance these diverse roles and how do they influence each other in your work and life?
That’s my kind of ministry, working with people who are disadvantaged and also helping to challenge people to think not just about what will happen after they’re dead, after they’ve died, but what is happening right now while we’re alive.
Nnimmo: Being an architect is very integrated with my being an environmentalist. Because even while studying architecture and in practice as an architect, I’ve always seen the design of spaces as a conscious way to build social cohesion and to give people access to spaces that enhance their dignity and comfort. I also find that architecture enables you to sometimes support people and society’s needs. Architecture can moderate behavior and get people to be calmer and not agitated or erratic, to want to share with one another, to be together, to build a collective in shared spaces. I’ve always had that social consciousness in design and, of course, always aim to be less wasteful in terms of materials use of energy by designing with nature in mind.
As a poet, I see architecture as poetry in concrete, in stone. The way you align the windows, the doors, the play with light, the overall spatial dispositions — their interpenetrations and movements echo our moving through ideas. The architect’s eye helps you to see the building, you penetrate the building, before it is constructed. So it helps your imagination, which is what we need also in activism.
Being a pastor is another way for me to express my humanity and also to realize that humans are not the only beings on the planet. It makes me see things very holistically and understand that we have a duty, a responsibility, to ensure that we don’t hurt other beings, the animals, the birds, the fish, the microorganisms in the soil. Living in harmony – harmony with oneself and with others. Understanding that we are here on Earth to support one another. And that it is only when we work in the collective that we get stronger. It’s also helped me in terms of building compassion for people who are suffering.
In fact, as a pastor, my main job has been relating with the unloved populations, the populations that are deprived, the populations that are sometimes ostracized from society. People who are discriminated against, people left on the roadsides of life, including the poor, the prisoners and the sick.
That’s my kind of ministry, working with people who are disadvantaged and also helping to challenge people to think not just about what will happen after they’re dead, after they’ve died, but what is happening right now while we’re alive.
So, everything is blended.
Boaventura: How would you describe the current political context in West Africa and in Nigeria in particular? What are the main challenges, and also opportunities, you and HOMEF see in the region?
Nnimmo: Nigeria has a very reactionary government at the moment. Over the past few governments, we’ve not really had anything close to having a radical, popular government. We have governments that are very right wing, governments that are totally at the apron strings of international financial institutions like the IMF and the World Bank. We have governments that are extractivist and who churn out anti-people policies. Sometimes it’s just amazing that governments can go that way so fast and so far.
And so this has an impact on the way we organize and the kind of things that we’re pushing for.
Over the years, we’ve been campaigning against oil pollution and marginalization of oil field communities and expansion of sacrifice zones. Now we have a mass of people who are actively campaigning against that and defending their rights to a safe environment. And we’ve seen some positive responses. For example, the cleanup of Ogoni land based on the United Nations Environment Programme report of 2011. Now we’re campaigning to escalate that to a cleanup of the entire region, the entire Niger Delta. And now coalitions are coming together to make that happen.
Another area of major campaigning in Nigeria has been around food sovereignty and against genetic engineering. Now governments, being what they are, from their perspective, they always talk about food security. Over the years, we have campaigned that food security is okay, but food sovereignty is fundamental. You cannot have true food security if you don’t have food sovereignty. Because food security says, if you’re hungry, eat whatever is presented to you irrespective of whether it is appropriate or not.
And so that opens the way for genetic engineering, opens the way for industrial monoculture agriculture. Opens the way for importation of food rather than supporting local farmers, local economies and supporting the local ecosystems.
Now, this campaign has been going on for a while, but right now, Nigeria is really, really awake to the fact that GMOs are a big threat. And that we need to support local farmers. So we work with farmers, academics, women groups and youths to push for agroecology as a viable alternative that aligns with our sociocultural realities. We’ve seen farmers learn, share knowledge and capacities and replicate best practices.
We are seeing a new wave of strength. This is happening in the political system that doesn’t really care, that’s so reactionary, and does not care about the people or the planet. The people are arising to recover their dignity and work in their best interest
This Interview originally appeared in, and can be read in its entirety on the Grassroots International Website.