Ogoni people resident in the United States of America (USA) said the resolution of the Ogoni crisis would only succeed by returning to why Ken Saro Wiwa and other Ogoni martyrs died.
The group has also alerted the Federal Government and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) that $360million so far spent on Ogoni Clean Up may have gone down the drain, leaving no visible impact in the devastated area.
The US wing of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP-USA) has thus placed a definite demand to the Presidency as well as the National Assembly (NASS), urging them to reenact and re-awake their conscience and start action.
The demand was said to have been submitted on Tuesday, April 12, 2022 at both Aso Rock and National Assembly by a delegation led by the Nigeria-based Public Relations Officer (PRO) of MOSOP-USA, Susan Serekara-Nwikhana who is also the Rivers State chairperson of the National Association of Women Journalists (NAWOJ).
The mission which was initiated by the leadership of MOSOP in the USA led by an elder, DineBari Augustine Kpuinen, was said to be intended to renew the need for the FG to address the real essence why Ogoni martyrs died.
Briefing newsmen after submitting the position memorandum, the female activist said the submission also included various newspaper publications in recent times where the real issues have so far been canvassed.
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Serekara-Nwikhana said the MOSOP-USA group saw it fit to send the delegation to the seat of power to press it upon them at Aso Rock Presidential Villa and Apo Legislative Village to show the seriousness of the rehashed demands. She said the detailed documents were addressed directly to President Muhammadu Buhari the Nigeria Senate President, Alhmed Lawan.
To put the real issues in real and current perspective, the team leader said the memorandum submitted and attached documents tendered were comprehensive enough to outline the exact demands from the days of the slain environmentalist and his other eight compatriots up to the Ogoni Clean Up saga and beyond.
She said some of the documents were duly signed on receipt of the original copies by relevant authorised personnel of Aso Rock and the National Assembly.
She stated: “Documents submitted to the Nigerian President and the Nigerian Senate President include and not limited to the letter captioned, ‘The appointment of an Ogoni and the clean up.’ This was attached with original newspaper publications and half page advertorial in a business newspaper titled ‘Communique issued at the end of 26th anniversary in commemoration of the judicial murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists held from 5th to 7th November 2021in Houston Texas, USA.’”
She said MOSOP also presented publications of the $360 million pumped into the Ogoni clean up by the President Buhari-led administration allegedly without significant impact on the land and the people.
The memo also mentioned the push for renewed oil exploration in Ogoni which the group said was a violation of the UNEP Report.
Other materials said to have been made available to the Presidency and the NASS leadership were the demand for Ogoni State as already published in some national newspapers as far back as December 2021 and the demand for an airport in Ogoni to facilitate the take-off of a new university.
MOSOP USA also reminded the federal authorities that their demand for special attention for Ogoni in the budgets have already been made public through newspaper publications in 2022 and hoped that a democratic government as Nigeria’s is would regard the demands as the true desire and demand of the Ogoni people.
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