Federal Govt. should accelerate Ogoni clean-up

The people of Ogoni land in Rivers State would wish the clean-up of their environment from oil pollution promised them by President Muhammadu Buhari had yielded a better result, as the tenure of the government winds down. Before Buhari’s emergence as president, the people had resisted every attempt by government and oil companies to restart oil exploration in their homeland, after years of debacle between the people and the oil companies protected by the Federal Government.

The resistance against environmental pollution claimed the lives of prominent Ogoni sons, including the renowned writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, whose killing resulted in international sanctions against Nigeria. Saro-Wiwa and other eight activists were tried by a secret military tribunal and sentenced to death for the killing of Edward Kobani and three other Ogoni leaders who were allegedly killed for being accomplices of the Federal Government’s effort to restart oil exploration in Ogoni land. The government of Gen. Sani Abacha, despite pleas from world leaders and prominent Nigerians, sanctioned the execution of Saro-Wiwa and his fellow activists before their appeal to a superior court could be heard.

The fallout of that unfortunate debacle was a long drawn battle between the people on one side and the Federal Government and Shell Oil Company on the other side. But the protracted negotiation and mediation championed by prominent cleric Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah eventually resulted in an environmental remediation agreement considered a model for resuscitation of the Niger Delta region. President Buhari was trusted by the Ogoni people to deliver on that remediation exercise.

With barely four months to the end of the Buhari regime, the people of Ogoni are disillusioned that the remediation is moving at a snail’s pace. According to the Guardian Newspaper’s report, “a visit to about 10 remediation sites being handled by Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) around Korokro in Tai, Ogali in Eleme, four locations in Gokana, and others in Khana, revealed that though some work had been done, but from a layman’s viewpoint, there is no difference between a remediated (certified) site and others yet to be certified clean.”