Mkpoikana Udoma
Port Harcourt — Stakeholders in the country have said President Muhammadu Buhari’s planned pardoning of Ken Saro Wiwa and eight Ogoni martyrs in exchange for support to resume oil exploration in Oil Mining Lease, OML, 11 was in bad faith and capable of causing another round of chaos in Ogoniland.
“Proposing an unnecessary ‘pardon’ for the Ogoni nine, seemingly in exchange for support to reopen OML 11, is in bad faith and capable to breeding conflict,” the stakeholders, including environmentalists, rights activists and civil society groups, said in a statement signed by them.
It could be recalled that a group of Ogoni leaders had a meeting recently at the State House with President Muhammadu Buhari, where the President stated that “the federal government will consider the request for the grant of pardon to Ken Saro Wiwa and others, to finally close the Ogoni saga.”
The President also used the opportunity of the meeting to announced that the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company Ltd, a subsidiary of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, had been granted license to re-open and operate OML 11.
But, stakeholders, which included the environmentalists, rights activists and civil society groups, have said that if the President is interested in restoring justice in Ogoniland, he should exonerate the Ogoni nine, apologise to the Ogoni people and not grant a pardon.
A statement jointly signed by the stakeholders regretted that the federal government was thinking of reopening OML11 when the issues which Ken Saro Wiwa and eight Ogoni martyrs died for, including fairer benefits to the Ogoni people from oil wealth, environmental remediation and compensation for the damages caused by the reckless activities of oil companies, were not being addressed.
They also demanded for urgent actions toward the clean-up of the entire Niger Delta region, explaining that the ecological disaster in other parts of the oil producing areas of the country are similar to Ogoni or worse.
Signatories to the statement include Dr Nnimmo Bassey for Health of Mother Earth Foundation; Ken Henshaw for We the People; Celestine AkpoBari for Peoples’ Advancement Centre; Chima Williams of Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria; Abiodun Baiyewu of Global Rights; and Umo Isua of Peace Point Development Foundation.
Others are Philip Jakpor, Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa; Iyingi Irimagha, Gender and Development Action; Olumide Idowu, International Climate Change Development Initiative; Tijah Bolton, Policy Alert; Rev. Williams Probel of Ogoni Peoples Assembly.
The statement read in part: “It is pertinent to recollect that in 1993, Shell was forced to abandon its OML 11 operations located in Ogoni and pull out of the area.
“This was the direct outcome of passionate but peaceful campaigns by the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People led by Ken Saro-Wiwa. MOSOP had called the attention of the world to the poverty, neglect and environmental destruction which decades of oil exploitation had bequeathed on the Ogoni people.
“MOSOP had also demanded fairer benefits to the Ogoni people from oil wealth, as well as remediation and compensation for the ecological damage caused by the reckless activities of oil companies. These have still not been addressed.
“In 2007, the United Nations Environment Programme carried out a scientific assessment of the impact of oil pollution on parts of the Ogoni environment, the report of UNEP indicated massive soil and water contamination in Ogoni land, which has significantly compromised sources of livelihood and was slowly poisoning the inhabitants.
“So alarmed was UNEP about the findings that it recommended that inhabitants of the area immediately stop using water from all their traditional sources, while the government was to immediately commence a clean up exercise which could take up to 30years. It was only about three years ago, that the government began actual clean up with a new agency called HYPREP.
“It is therefore shocking that while the clean up is ongoing, the government is prioritising the restarts of oil extraction in the same area being cleaned up, with all its polluting impacts.
“It is important to reiterate that proposing an unnecessary ‘pardon’ for the Ogoni nine, seemingly in exchange for support to reopen OML 11, is in bad faith and capable to breeding conflict.
“If the President is interested in reversing the injustice which the murder of the Ogoni 9 represents, the appropriate action is to exonerate the Ogoni martyrs and apologize to the Ogoni people.
“We also advice the President to institute strategies for a region wide clean up of decades of environmental pollution which has stolen the people’s livelihood and poisoned them.”
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