The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) has decried the high rate of infant mortality in Ogoniland. Speaking yesterday in Bori, headquarters of Khana Local Government Area, Publicity Secretary of MOSOP, Fegalo Nsuke, said: “Shell’s war against the Ogoni people has started showing an unprecedented impact that threatens to wipe off the entire Ogoni nation.”

Nsuke said preliminary checks show that at least four out 10 children born in Ogoniland die within three months. He noted that this trend has been noticed in all Ogoni kingdoms in varying degrees. He thus called for immediate action to remediate the polluted land in order to save the people from ultimate death.

“We are very scared by this trend particularly because a recent study by Prof. Roland Hodler and Research Assistant, Anna Breuderle, from the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland have found that of the 16,000 infants killed within the first month of their life in the Niger Delta in 2012, 70 per cent, about 11,000 infants would have survived their first year in the absence of oil spills,” Nsuke said.

The situation in Ogoniland, according to the MOSOP Spokesman, is an emergency and underscores the need for immediate action to improve the quality of drinking water available for the people and for the remediation of the polluted environment.

Nsuke said that the government of Nigeria and Shell are to blame for this calamity.

“Shell had been primarily responsible for the death of these children but not without the alliance of the Nigerian government. They have failed to cleanup Ogoniland, they have also failed to provide clean water and basic health facilities for the people and we have reasons to say they have deliberately done these,” he said.