The Ogoni Community Development Network has expressed concern over media reports indicating that a committee which was set up by the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP) to develop a template for investors was expanded by Senator Magnus Abe in his private home during a new year party last Wednesday.

“We consider this action to be absolutely wrong, dictatorial, a distortion and invalid.

OCDN states that no decision of the expanded committee can be valid as it lacks the support of the same authority which put the initial five-man committee in place. The expansion of the committee therefore is absolutely a useless exercise as Senator Abe lacks every mandate to sit in his private home to expand a committee set up by the people under MOSOP,” OCDN said in a statement signed by its President, Johnson Kuele.

“OCDN therefore rejects every decision taken under the Senator Abe’s expended committee.

OCDN therefore condemn this impunity, reject the re-constitution and expansion of a people-based committee to include Senator Abe’s cronies.

“We are very concerned about developments in Nigeria’s Ogoniland and reject this action as it is not only illegitimate to alter a people-based decision by the dictates of one man at a New Year party in his private home but also distorts the neutrality of the committee,” the statement said.