Pollution or no pollution, oil production will go on

NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT PRIMARILY HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL TRAGEDY IN OGONILAND, WHILE ROYAL DUTCH/SHELL IS A PARTNER IN CRIME: Says MOSOP.

A MOSOP Committee set up on the 18th of August, 2011 by MOSOP President/Spokesman, Dr. Goodluck Diigbo to review the Nigerian Government threat that: “Pollution or no pollution, oil production will go on in Ogoniland as already planned,” submitted its report at a MOSOP General Assembly Meeting at Nonwa on Friday, 16th September, 2011. The Committee Report holds the Nigerian Government primarily responsible for the environmental tragedy in Ogoniland, saying that the Royal Dutch/Shell is a partner in crime. The Committee, which included representatives of ten affiliates of MOSOP, recommended what it calls “justifiable stiffer resistance,” against attempts to seize lands or resume oil production in Ogoniland. The resistance package includes use of tactics to protect Ogonis, their families and property against physical attack. The tactics are part of the indigenous Ogoni customary and traditional law, designed to prevent desecration of ancestral lands and sacred sites.

The Group General Manager of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Dr. Levi Ajuonuma in an interview with This Day, a Nigerian newspaper on Sunday, August 14, 2011 had suggested that irrespective of a damning UNEP Ogoniland report that it would take 30 years to clean up, oil production will go on in Ogoniland. MOSOP General Assembly said the Ogoni people will cooperate with relevant United Nations agencies, especially the United Nations Trusteeship Council to implement any acceptable UNEP Ogoniland Assessment Report. The Trusteeship Council was formed in 1945 to oversee decolonization to help ensure that trust territories were administered in the best interests of their inhabitants and of international peace and security. The Ogoni people will reject direct or indirect involvement of the federal, State or local governments in Nigeria.

Answering some questions, MOSOP President/Spokesman, Dr. Goodluck Diigbo maintained: “I have read various articles and reports attempting comparison between the Ogoni environmental tragedy and the U.S. blowout. The oil there bubbled up from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico when the Transocean Deepwater Horizon rig caught fire on April 20, 2010 and sank two days later. President Barack Obama swiftly responded and decisively. In Nigeria, 55 years went by. No single cup of clean water has been provided in the entire Ogoniland with over 1.2 million people. The Nigerian Government still doesn’t see the tragedy in Ogoniland, as a human tragedy. All that the Nigerian government sees and wants the Ogoni people to have is the Hobson's choice; only one option: To allow for oil production, or be hanged to death. The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is the most senior partner in the Petroleum Industry in Nigeria and it is owned 100 percent by the Nigerian Government.”

On the issue of liability: “I thought about operational and technological responsibility. Nigeria should have insisted that oil companies fully comply with best international environmental practices, including UNEP and UNCTAD basic standards. The government made a choice to conspire and collaborate with its partners in crime. I have asked for a meeting of all stakeholders to collectively look at the UNEP Ogoniland Assessment Report in order to draw up a road-map on the way forward. Nigeria is faced with so many unsolved problems, now complicated by threat to international peace and security. It will be difficult to talk about addressing the Ogoni situation by first excluding the Ogoni people. No one knows the problems of the Ogoni people than the Ogoni people, and as represented by MOSOP – the collective voice of the Ogoni people.”

Tambari Deekor

Associate Editor, MOSOP Media

tdeekor88@gmail.com

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