Senior Correspondent, ISHAYA IBRAHIM, reports on the threat by activists from Ogoni, Rivers State, to disrupt oil flow if the 2011 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report on the area is not implemented by the federal government by August this year
Almost three years after a United Nations (UN) report said it would take 30 years and at least $1 billion to rid Ogoniland of intolerable toxics, the federal government is yet to act on it. And now, Ogoni people are angry and threatening that if the government does not begin clean-up work on their land before August 4, the third anniversary of the report, they would disrupt oil production in the country.
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) had, in a report on August 4, 2011, established that pollution from over 50 years of oil operations in Ogoniland had penetrated further and deeper than many may have supposed. The report thus concluded that if contaminated drinking water, land, creeks and ecosystems such as mangroves are to be brought back to full productive health, the Nigerian government must commit $1 billion (about N160 billion) for a clean-up of the environment.
Celestine Akpobari
But almost three years down the line, the government has not made any tangible move towards the exercise. Hence, the national coordinator of the Ogoni Solidarity Forum, Celestine Akpobari, said his people are willing to do the needful in compelling the federal government to begin action on the report.
He had said: “August 4 is the third anniversary of the release of that report, and if they have not started implementing the UNEP report before that day, there will be no oil export in this country again. Don’t forget that all the oil produced in the Niger Delta pass through Ogoni to Bonny for export. We will take over the pipeline. There will be no export. They (federal government) should be prepared to dig mass grave to bury everybody. We have decided and that is the way it is going to be,” he said.
For Akpobari, the reason the federal government is not giving the UNEP report the needed attention is because President Goodluck Jonathan has no regard for them.
“The president is just petty, very petty. I imagine him saying: ‘Why are the Ogoni people making noise? Are they the only people that have bad environment? Don’t we have bad environment too?’ As if the Ogoni would have fought for them. We fought for ourselves, and the UN intervened. What is difficult in bringing $1 billion take-off grant? This is money they give to their girlfriends. All these are people that have been stealing billions of subsidy money and yet they don’t supply the fuel. He is just too petty,” he said.
Akpobari also said the non-implementation of the UNEP report is just one of the injustices being meted to the Ogoni. For instance, he said the Ogoni, despite their majority status in Rivers State, have yet to produce the state governor, and that the presidency wants to deny them the chance again in 2015 using the military.
“I am afraid that the appointment of a Rivers son (General Kenneth Minimah) as the Chief of Army Staff is not because Jonathan loves Rivers State. After all, he grew up in Rivers, worked in Rivers and married in Rivers; yet he has not sited any project in the state. I think the appointment of that young man is all because the federal government will want to unleash military might on Rivers people during the election to get what they want,” he said.
Akpobari accused the presidency of plotting to impose the controversial Minister of Education, Nyesom Wike, as Rivers governor in 2015, vowing, however, that the Ogoni people will resist that move.
“We have been hearing in the media that the president’s wife wants to produce the governor of Bauchi, Bayelsa and Rivers. When you hear rumour like that, 99 per cent truth is in it. And, of course, she has confirmed it through her press secretary that she would want to support Wike to be the next governor. But Rivers does not belong to Ikwerre people. Celestine Omehia is an Ikwerre, Rotimi Amaechi is an Ikwerre and Nyesom Wike is an Ikwerre. You have ethnic nationality like the Ogoni people that is yet to produce a governor, a deputy governor, a speaker or chief judge in a state where they are in the majority. This is what we will resist,” he said.
