Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to avert another breakdown of the peace and bloodletting in Ogoniland by checking the activities of Belema Oil Producing Limited and Robo Michael Limited.
MOSOP is an umbrella mass organization of Ogoni people, a micro-ethnic nationality in the Rivers State axis of Southern Nigeria still seen as an endangered people because of crude oil.
MOSOP says the alleged desperation of the mentioned oil companies for Ogoni oil has created local groups sharply divided against one another with potentials for serious crisis in the area, contending that the ‘’divide and conquer’’ tactics of the two oil companies said to be associates of the Anglo-Dutch oil and gas major, Shell, are seriously pitching the Ogoni against themselves and could lead to a full scale conflict between the groups.
As usual, the organisation maintains that the way forward is a peaceful settlement through dialogue taking into strong consideration the interests of the Ogoni people as articulated in their Ogoni Bill of Rights. They have equally expressed displeasure with the government seeming ignorance of the boiling situation while companies representing Abuja’s interests continue to sponsor local actors who have turned themselves into rival groups projecting the various interests of their sponsors and representing real threats to the peace of Ogoniland.
This is coming while the burning issue of cleaning up the dark side of oil activities is yet to be comprehensively resolved. For instance, on Wednesday, July 26, 2016, the Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), an environmental rights advocacy group galvanised by a renowned environmentalist, Nnimmo Bassey, held training and consultative meeting for community environmental monitors, with specific emphasis on the planned clean-up of polluted sites in Ogoni.
The meeting held at the Aluebo Town Hall, Ogale, Nchia-Eleme, Ogoni. Attendance was mostly from environmental monitors who had previously been identified and trained from the four Ogoni local government areas in Rivers State, as well as civil society, community activists and the media.
After presentations and deliberations in plenary and workgroups, the consultative meeting/training noted that the soil, air and water pollution which the people of the Ogoni area have been exposed to have adversely affected crop yield for farmers, fish yield for fisher folks and generally reduced the people’s ability to generate income and provide for their wellbeing. This fact has in turn exposed the community to unprecedented levels of poverty, destitution and deprivation.
The meeting also noted that air, soil and water pollution in Ogoniland has manifested in serious health problems which the people have had to deal with for many years. Some of these challenges ranging from various forms of respiratory disorders, heart deficiencies, lung related illnesses, problems with the outer epidermis, reproductive disorders including stillbirths, foetal malformation etc., have not been appropriately studied or documented in any detailed manner.
On the implementation of the clean-up, the consultative meeting noted that the Federal Government has demonstrated significant commitment in commencing the clean-up of Ogoniland in response to the recommendations of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Report. The meeting was, however, worried that there were many cases of ongoing pollution in Ogoniland thus making the proposed clean-up rather complicated.
The consultative meeting equally noted that while the government has held several meetings with various interest groups on the clean-up process, the process of consultation still requires further work, noting that the multifarious expectations from the clean-up process is evidence that many people expect that process to become something it is not.
This, the meeting said, could lead to a problem of unrealised expectations, which could seriously undermine the process. It was also noted that structures have not been instituted which makes the people part of the process as monitors of milestones and standards as well as actual agents of the clean-up. The meeting expressed fear that if this is not done, the type of community ‘buy-in’ and ‘ownership’ which is required for a smooth implementation process may be lost.
Six whole years after UNEP issued a damning assessment of the Ogoni environment, the kinsmen and women of the late Ken Saro-Wiwa are still forced to continue wallowing in the toxic broth that their lands and waters have been made to become. Ogoniland was once a land that supported productive farming, fishing and related activities. That was so till the oil-rigs began to puncture holes in the land and crude oil began to be spilled on lands when gas flares.
Ogoni people in the late 1980s started to raise the alarm over the wholesale destruction of their environment, followed by a peaceful protest and the Ogoni Bill of Rights of 1990. In it, they catalogued their demands for environmental, socio-economic and political justice. Although the Bill was presented to the government till date there has not been any response or engagement with the document.
The Bill became an organising bible for the Ogoni and eventually inspired other ethnic nationalities in the Niger Delta to produce similar charters as a peaceful way of prodding the government into dialogue and action. The Bill noted that although crude oil had been extracted from Ogoniland from 1958 they had received nothing in return.
Articles 15-18 of the Bill read:
15. That the search for oil has caused severe land and food shortages in Ogoni – one of the most densely populated areas of Africa (average: 1,500 per square mile; national average: 300 per square mile.)
16. That neglectful environmental pollution laws and sub-standard inspection techniques of the Federal authorities have led to the complete degradation of the Ogoni environment, turning our homeland into an ecological disaster.
17. That the Ogoni people lack education, health and other social facilities.
18. That it is intolerable that one of the richest areas of Nigeria should wallow in abject poverty and destitution.
This was the precursor to the Kaiama Declaration of the Ijaw, lkwerre Rescue Charter, Aklaka Declaration for the Egi, the Urhobo Economic Summit Resolution, Oron Bill of Rights and other demands of peoples’ organisations in the Niger Delta.
The UNEP report which was presented to former President Goodluck Jonathan on August 4, 2011 completely confirmed the claims of the Ogoni that neglectful environmental pollution laws and sub-standard inspection techniques of the federal authorities have led to the complete degradation of their environment, turning their homeland into an ecological disaster.
The report found that all the water bodies in Ogoni was polluted by the activities of oil companies, principally Shell, operating in Nigeria as Shell Petroleum Development Company and the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). According to the report, some of what the people took as potable water had carcinogens, such as benzene, up to 900 times above World Health Organisation (WHO) standards. It also revealed that at some places in Ogoni, the soil is polluted with hydrocarbons to a depth of five metres.
UNEP revealed that the Ogoni homeland has been turned into an “ecological disaster,” as the Bill of Rights asserted. The UNEP report however, made recommendations that most activists saw as low hanging fruits that government could easily have responded to assuage the pains of the people and commence a process of restoring the territory to an acceptable state. ‘’The apparent inaction is nothing but a squandering of opportunities to rescue a people and for impactful political action’’, Nnimmo Bassey said.
Bassey, a former Chair of Friends of the Earth International (FoEI), a global federation of environmental rights advocacy groups told this reporter in an online interview, ‘’a total clean up of Ogoni land will take a life time or about 30 years at the least. That is the length of time UNEP estimates it will require to clean up the water bodies in the territory. And it will require an additional five years to clean up the land. (How is that a lifetime?) Well, life expectancy in the Niger Delta stands at approximately 41 years’’.
At the eve of the first anniversary of the presentation of the UNEP report, Abuja hurriedly cobbled up an outfit incongruously named Hydrocarbons Pollution Restoration Project (HYPREP). The project was apparently set up to hoodwink the Ogoni people into thinking that action was being taken to implement the UNEP report. A year after the setting up of HYPREP under the Ministry of Petroleum Resources – a major polluter of Ogoni land – the only visible acts of implementation of the UNEP report has been the planting of sign posts at some places informing the people that their environment is contaminated and that they should keep off.
Bassey again, ‘’you could almost laugh, but this is sad and serious. Keep off your environment! No options given. The people still drink the polluted waters and farm the polluted lands. Seafood is still being scrounged from the polluted waters and community people still process their foods in the crude-coated creeks. Six years after the UNEP report, we believe that it is not still too late for the government to act.
‘’President Buhari can declare Ogoni land an ecological disaster zone and invest resources to tackle the deep environmental disaster here. Urgently provide potable drinking water across Ogoni land; commission an assessment of the entire Niger Delta environment. An assessment or audit of the environment of the entire nation should equally be on the cards urgently; and those found guilty of crimes against the people and the environment should be brought to book and made to pay for their misdeeds’’.
Continuing, he said, ‘’blame for oil thefts must go beyond the diversionary focus on the miniscule volumes taken up by bush refiners. The major crude oil stealing mafias must be uncovered. Crude oil and gas volumes must also be metred as demanded by groups. Engage in dialogue with the Ogoni people as to the time-scale and scope of actions to be taken to restore the environment. Issues raised in the Ogoni Bills of Rights and the UNEP report provide good bases for dialogue. Extend this all over the Niger Delta. Ensure that the actions to tackle the ecological disaster that the Niger Delta has become are not seen as opportunity for patronage or jobs for the boys.
‘’UNEP should play a key oversight role, to ensure quality and to build confidence in the process. The body to tackle the problem should be domiciled in the Ministry of Environment and should not by any means be under the polluting Petroleum Resources Ministry.
Shell should be ordered to urgently dismantle whatever remains of their facilities in Ogoni land along with toxic wastes they dumped in the territory. Shell should also be required to replace the Trans Niger Delta pipeline that carries crude oil from other parts of the region across Ogoni territory. Clean up the polluted lands and waters.
‘’These are just some of the steps that must be taken urgently. The UNEP report gives a good list of several things that need to be done. The time has come to halt the ostrich posture and to face the national environmental challenges squarely. Two years is long enough. Our peoples have patiently lined up to fall into early graves. Twenty-three years ago several Ogoni people were sacrificed because they dared to speak up concerning the state of their homeland’’.
When the UNEP report on the assessment of the Ogoni environment was released in August 2011 the world was astounded at the level of devastation visited on the territory by decades of oil extraction and pollution.
Ogoni shot into international glare in the early 1990s when the people demanded an end to reckless despoliation of their land and waters. When the UNEP report was released there was a general sense of relief that at last a definitive study has been carried out in at least a part of the Niger Delta and that remediation steps would be taken to rescue the people from the impacts of the pollution.
Shell, the major polluter in the territory, paid for the study in a rather poetic turn of events, on the polluter-pays basis. If that was not an admission of culpability in the ecocide in Ogoni, one may wish to invent another word for the crime.
The UNEP report set out simple emergency actions to be taken to ensure an acceptable clean up of Ogoni. One of the key recommendations was that government should set up an Ogoniland Environmental Restoration Authority. This authority was to have a starting fund of $1.00 billion. Rather than set up this body that would set about the restoration of Ogoni, what government did was to set up HYPREP. This project has succeeded in planting some pollution warning signposts in Ogoni and billboards on oil thefts in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital.
Activists say between the recommended body and what government created shows that something is critically wrong. They are asking, why set up a body that would restore rather than clean up pollution? Ogoniland is badly polluted as it is, to set up a body to compound the pollution is alarming, not amusing. .
UNEP officials led by Erik Solheim, former Norwegian Minister of Environment and International Development and UNEP Special Envoy for Disasters and Conflicts, visited Nigeria early February 2013 to meet with government officials and some partners in Abuja and Port Harcourt. The purpose of the visit was to get a sense of what was being done with the UNEP Environmental Assessment of Ogoniland and to know what the next steps would be.
It has not been clear what the team came away with. But, environmental rights advocacy groups that are active in the Niger Delta at least know that UNEP is committed to seeing the report implemented and Ogoniland cleaned.
In a statement issued by UNEP at the start of the visit, Solheim said “With regard to Ogoniland, the UN system is committed to supporting the government throughout the entire process of implementing the recommendations of the report. On behalf of UNEP, I look forward to coordinated and collaborative action with our Nigerian and international partners in addressing pollution in Ogoniland.”
The Ogoni people are one of the most mobilised peoples anywhere in the world. The umbrella Movement for the Survival of Ogoni (MOSOP) enjoys a high level of support across the Ogoni kingdoms, has provided consistent leadership over the years and is well respected by the people. That is, despite some difficult moments, as would be expected of any serious movement.
The degree of cohesion of the Ogoni people provides an excellent template for government to set about the clean up of the territory in a transparent and easy manner. If there are to be difficulties it should be of the technical kind, not the socio-political varieties.
Going by popular demands, perhaps, it is not too late for the government to scrap HYPREP and set up the recommended Ogoniland Environmental Restoration Authority. HYPREP was a seeming hasty creation to tell the world that one step has been taken, one year after the release of the UNEP report. But steps taken in the wrong direction may be many, keeping in that direction may not eventually lead to the right destination. It is equally wasteful to insist on building on a faulty foundation.
Already, HOMEF is demanding: Scrap HYPREP set up the Authority. This Authority will then set about consulting the people, call mass meetings of the Ogoni people, circulate the popular (pidgin English) version of the summary of the UNEP report which can be downloaded from the UNEP website, present the strategy for the clean up to the people and transparently set out the budget outlay for the exercise.
‘’The Authority will have the Ogoni people endorse its broad plan and strategies for implementation and monitoring as well. The Authority should be domiciled in either the Ministry of Environment or in the Presidency. It should by no means be located in the Ministry of Petroleum Resources – a key polluter, through the NNPC, in Ogoniland’’.
As UNEP acknowledges, the clean-up required will be complex and there may not be a single method of getting this done. Any delay means further reducing the quality of life and the life expectancy of the people that has already dropped to just over 40 years mainly due to the hydrocarbon pollution. Bloodshed and great sacrifices have been borne by the Ogoni people. The clean up of the territory is not an occasion for gambling.
The selection of consultants, contractors and the handling of the budget require very strict oversight. While activists agree that it is possible to have officials in the Authority to handle the procurement and budgetary matters, it is however, believed that while the in-house crew plays roles in those tasks, an agency such as UNEP should play major oversight roles. If this recommendation were accepted UNEP will not handle any of the clean up jobs, but would rather play a monitoring role.
Concerned citizens are yet to see the Legislative arm of the Federal Government taking up the clean up of Ogoniland as a critical issue of national interest. They need to. It is their duty to ensure that a proper Authority is set up and that there is adequate budgetary outlay for the tasks with both government and Shell putting the money on the table and having an umpire like the UNEP empowered to warehouse the funds. Getting things on the right track is extremely urgent.
As UNEP rightly stated, “Continued delay in the implementation of the recommendations will not only undermine the livelihoods of the Ogoni communities, but will also cause the pollution footprint to expand. In the long run, the findings of the study itself will become dated, and therefore further assessments will be needed, causing additional delays.”
It will be another scandal if this sense of urgency gets ignored by Abuja and Ogoni allowed to be a killing field because of the crude business of oil.
