OGONI: How Politics, Parochial Interests Threaten A Cleanup

AN intricate fusion of political intrigues and parochial vested interests may be hampering the speedy take off of the implementation of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report on Ogoniland.
While for many poor Ogoni people, the delay could be likened to a hope deferred that makes the heart of the people sick, some self seeking individuals seem not to be concerned about the adverse implication of the prolonged delay in implementing the UNEP recommendations.

While many in the environmentally battered Ogoni communities anxiously awaits the commencement of the cleanup of their polluted land, the Minister of Environment, Mrs. Amini Ibrahim, recently blamed lingering internal issues among the Ogoni elites for the seeming procrastination in actualizing President Muhammadu Buhari’s directive for the fast-tracking of the exercise

The financial stakes in the Ogoni cleanup are enormous with potential to create jobs, which explains the intrigues that has characterized the last election of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) and its face off with other various vested interest groups in the area.

Last December, two factional presidents of MOSOP emerged, namely; Mr. Legborsi Saro Pyagbara and Mr. Mike Lube-Nwidobie. The two factions subsequently submitted different list of nominees to the Federal Government to be appointed into a board that will oversee the implementation of the UNEP report. This untoward development created confusion that also impeded government’s determination to resolve the prolonged remediation.

It will be recalled that in December 2015, MOSOP had re-elected its incumbent president, Pyagbara, to pilot the affairs of the Ogoni umbrella organisation for the next three (3) years. He was said to have defeated his main opponent, Lube-Nwidobie with fifty-one (51) votes.
The Nwidobie faction of MOSOP had accused Pyagbara of organising a shoddy transition process by hurriedly‎ putting together a compromised electoral committee less than three weeks to his official handover date.

Former MOSOP public relations officer, Legborsi Esaen, who was suspended by the Pyagbara faction prior to the crisis rocking the organisation was selected as the chairman of a parallel electoral committee. He stated that Lube-Nwidobie had distributed copies of a petition against the entire electoral process. According to him, this stalled the election as even the security operatives present advised ‎that the election be called off.

“This led to an emergency congress (as a doctrine of necessity) at which the Prince Biira-led electoral committee was dissolved, I and four others were mandated to ‎conduct fresh elections by 10am the following day, 31st December 2015, to forestall a leadership vacuum. I had initially turned down‎ this offer to chair the electoral committee, since I no longer wanted to be identified with Mr. Pyagbara’s MOSOP. This is not the first time this doctrine will be applied, like in the setting up of caretaker (which the MOSOP constitution does not have provision for). The election held about 10am on 31st December 2015, Chief Mike Lube-Nwidobie emerged winner‎ having scored 821 votes over Mr. Legborsi Pyagbara, who scored 186” he said.

But the publicity secretary of Pyagbara faction of MOSOP, Fegalo Nsuke, narrated that this crisis that now threatens the Ogoni cleanup has been politically instigated and targeted at short-changing the Ogoni people by grabbing funds earmarked for the Ogoni cleanup project. He alleged that facts abound that the cause of this problem is the $1,000,000,000 takeoff grant for the planned environmental restoration exercise, which is being eyed by the masterminds of the unwarranted controversies bedeviling MOSOP.

PERTURBED by this ugly development, some past leaders and activists of the Movement, leaders of thought and elders from Ogoni met recently to seek means of resolving the crisis and properly reposition the Movement.
At the end of the meeting, a resolution committee was set up comprising Ledum Mitee, Professor Don Baridam, Dr. Meshach Karanwi, Rev. Dr. Abraham Olungwe, Lenusikpugi Kpagih, Chief Monday Abueh and Ms Rose Nwigani, to meet with all sides, traditional rulers and other leaders from the area, with a view to resolving the crisis and reposition the Movement appropriately in order to meet its avowed objectives. Accordingly, the meeting appealed to all sides to the present crisis to cooperate with the resolution committee and to refrain from actions or public statements capable of undermining the current peace process.

Former MOSOP Provisional Council Chairman, Professor Benedict Naanen, whose Bodo community is one of the worst impacted in Ogoni, told The Guardian that whatever differences that arose, which ought not to have arisen in the first place are being addressed internally by the Ogoni leadership. He said the Federal Government and other stakeholders should not cite the crisis as reason for the delayed implementation of the UNEP report.

Naanen, who insisted Pyagbara remains the president of MOSOP, observed that the impression being created outside has been that MOSOP is having internal crisis. And that Ogoni leaders felt that the government was going to use that situation as excuse for further delay in fast tracking the clean up.

“We are clearly concerned. The Ogoni people are concerned. In August last year, President Buhari made a statement to fast-tract the cleanup process. There had been a multi-stakeholders process that was initiated under the Goodluck Jonathan administration that could not be consummated before the 2015 election campaign. President Buhari had given directive that the multi-stakeholder process should be consummated. And they drew up a proposal for the clean up. So when the President made that announcement on the 4th August 2015, that proposal was before him. It was on the basis of that proposal produced by the stakeholders that he announced the fast-tracking of the cleanup process. But we are surprised that up till now, nothing has been done,” he said

Naanen observed that President Buhari, has in the last six months continued to reaffirm his commitment to cleanup Ogoni, and definitely, a lot of the people don’t have any reason to doubt his sincerity. He however, expressed reservation about the people saddled with the responsibility of handling the process.

The Ogoni leader empathically blamed vested political interests for the crisis that has plagued MOSOP. Besides that, he also argued that the non-implementation of the UNEP report is engineering the differences among Ogoni elites.

He revealed that a harmonized list of persons to be nominated to the governing council to be set up for the cleanup had been submitted by both MOSOP and KAGOTE, has been presented to the Federal Government.

“It is surprising that nothing has been done. And Ogoni people are worried. Quite honestly the people are getting agitated and we pray that the whole thing does not result in another round of crisis out of desperation. So the government should do something about it. The minister should not use the so-called MOSOP crisis as an excuse for not commencing the implementation. Actually, the minister has been having clandestine meetings and the purpose of such clandestine meetings I cannot say. If they are having meetings for that purpose, let them come out openly and meet the stakeholders. The minister herself is complicating the process,” he said.

The Guardian gathered from sources that lots of Ogoni elites were infuriated by the list initially submitted by MOSOP president. It was alleged that the names that he submitted were names of persons who have never been involved in Ogoni environmental activism.

Besides that, the Pyagbara faction has been accused of aligning with the governing Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state. Example often cited was that during the 2016 Ogoni day celebration every politician who attended the event was an elected PDP member in the state. Thus, Ogoni political leaders with affinity to the All Progressives Congress (APC) moved to thwart Pyagbara’s hold on MOSOP because they felt he cannot be romancing with PDP elements, while an APC government at the centre is embarking on the much anticipated cleanup.

The national coordinator, Ogoni Solidarity Forum (OSF) and a member of the Sustainable and Livelihood Technical working group on the implementation of the UNEP report, Celestine Akpobari, corroborated the Federal Government’s claim that internal wrangling in Ogoni has been partly responsible for the delay in the cleanup of the area.

“That is part of the reason because all the stakeholders were asked to nominate people that will form the governing board. Ogoni people submitted more than one list. Different groups submitted their own list and when we were just about to resolve that, by taking nominees from MOSOP and KAGOTE, MOSOP had a spilt and bombarded the minister with names. It was difficult. Buhari is serious. We just want to resolve those issues and move on. If not for those issues, the clean-up would have started,” he said.

Akpobari said another issue that has bedeviled take off of the cleanup was the initial intrigues surrounding the leadership of the governing council board. He claimed that the oil company personnel and ministry of environment officials respectively wanted to head the board. Besides this issue, he also revealed that there was also a protracted tussle between the Ministry of Petroleum and Ministry of Environment on which of them should oversee the cleanup. According to him, it was just recently that it was decided that the Ministry of Environment should be saddled with the remediation process.

“We insist on competency. We want whosoever is competent to do this thing. But I can tell you that there were scrambles over leadership because this thing has to move from Ministry of Petroleum to Ministry of Environment. The Petroleum Ministry wanted to control the cleanup process. The Ministry of Environment too. Eventually, it was moved to the Ministry of Environment. But the other stakeholders like the oil companies, want to head it. It was a problem but that has been resolved.”

Akpobari explained that he was worried about further delay in the implementation of the UNEP report. He pointed out that what many within and outside Ogoni do not seem to appreciate is the politics of the implementation of the UNEP since 2011, when the United Nations agency submitted the report to the then President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration.

“People from other states are pushing and pressing that the clean-up should not start from Ogoni but from somewhere else. The only upper hand we have is that we have the UNEP report that is on ground. There is no other place that has UNEP report. If any other place has UNEP or other report at all, they would have started from somewhere else. There has been pressure that the cleanup should start from Bayelsa. If not that Mrs. Amina Ibrahim is a woman of integrity this cleanup will not start from Ogoni because they would have taken advantage of the crisis in Ogoni and move on to another place. She is a woman who knows the implication of not starting the cleanup from Ogoni. I am sure that everything about the cleanup will start between now and the end of March,” added Akpobari.

During the January 4, 2016 Ogoni Day celebration, Pyagbara had commended the President Buhari led Federal Government for the renewed interest in the UNEP report and his approval of the fast track actions for the implementation of the report.  He however, seized the occasion to remind the government that the unusual delay for the takeoff of the project is becoming unbearable and indeed taxing the people’s patience.

“We urge the Federal Government to without further delay bring into being the announced structures and the roadmap for the implementation of the report that respects the sensibilities of the communities. The ongoing delay on the part of the government will continue to be seen as an act of genocide being committed against the Ogoni people. It is in this context that we are announcing that our series of non-violent actions will soon commence in the face of government’s continuing failure to announce the structures needed for the takeoff of the implementation of the UNEP report,” he said.

He also observed that beyond the issue of the cleanup of Ogoniland, the UNEP report also recommended the declaration of the Ogoni wetlands by the Government of Nigeria as a Ramsaar Site, to no avail. Worst still, he said the government was yet to implement the recommendation of reform of the environment regime and policies in the country and to enthrone a new environmental ethic.

“We want to draw the attention of the state and federal governments to the crisis in the health sector in Ogoni. Presently, the secondary health facilities in Ogoni are decadent and there is no tertiary health facility or Specialist health facility. The UNEP report had raised serious health concerns in relation to the health implications of the pollution footprints in the area and called amongst others the emplacement of a health registry,” said Pyagbara.

A United Nations special rapporteur who visited Nigeria in1999, four years after the extrajudicial murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa and his Ogoni kinsmen by the General Sani Abacha junta, had recommended an environmental audit of Ogoni. And in compliance to this recommendation, the Federal Government evoked the polluters’ pay principle, which compelled Shell to fund a $9.5million detailed study of the Ogoni environment, which outcome is today popularly referred to as the UNEP Report on Ogoniland.

An independent scientific assessment by UNEP had shown that pollution from over 50 years of oil operations in Ogoni has penetrated further and deeper than many may have supposed. The assessment, which is unprecedented and which took over a 14-month period to carry out, had UNEP team examining more than 200 locations, and surveyed 122 kilometres of pipeline rights of way; and reviewed more than 5,000 medical records.

UNEP said detailed soil and groundwater contamination investigations were conducted at 69 sites, which ranged in size from 1,300 square metres (Barabeedom and K-dere, Gokana local government area (LGA) to 79 hectares in Ajeokpori-Akpajo, Eleme Local government area of Rivers State. and together more than 4,000 samples were analyzed, including water taken from 142 groundwater monitoring wells drilled specifically for the study and soil extracted from 780 boreholes.

UNEP said its key findings revealed that in at least 10 Ogoni communities, drinking water was contaminated with high levels of hydrocarbons. For instance, in one community, at Nisisioken Ogale, it was discovered that families have been drinking water from wells that are contaminated with benzene – a known carcinogen – at levels over 900 times above World Health Organisation guidelines. The site where this was discovered is close to an NNPC pipeline.

“While the report provides clear operational recommendations for addressing the widespread oil pollution across Ogoniland, UNEP recommends that the contamination in Nisisioken Ogale warrants emergency action ahead of all other remediation efforts. While some on-the-ground results could be immediate, overall, the report estimates that countering and cleaning up the pollution and catalyzing a sustainable recovery of Ogoniland could take 25 to 30 years,” said UNEP.

The UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, Achim Steiner then, said Ogoni cleanup will require the deployment of modern technology to cleanup contaminated land and water, improved environmental monitoring and regulation and collaborative action between the government, the Ogoni people and the oil industry.

“It is UNEP’s hope that the findings can break the decades of deadlock in the region and provide the foundation upon which trust can be built and action undertaken to remedy the multiple health and sustainable development issues facing people in Ogoniland. In addition, it offers a blueprint for how the oil industry- and public regulatory authorities- might operate more responsibly in Africa and beyond at a time of increasing production and exploration across many parts of the Continent,” said Steiner.

UNEP observed that control and maintenance of oilfield infrastructure in Ogoniland has been and remains inadequate: the Shell’s own procedures have not been applied, creating public health and safety issues. It added that the impact of oil on mangrove vegetation has been disastrous. Oil pollution in many intertidal creeks has left mangroves-nurseries for fish and natural pollution filters-denuded of leaves and stems with roots coated in a layer of bitumen-type substance sometimes one centimetre or more thick.

The report recommended establishing three new institutions in Nigeria to support a comprehensive environmental restoration exercise.

UNEP proposed an Ogoniland Environmental Restoration Authority to oversee implementation of the study’s recommendations and should be set up during a Transition Phase, which UNEP suggests should begin as soon as possible. The Authority’s activities, UNEP recommended should be funded by an Environmental Restoration Fund for Ogoniland, to be set up with an initial capital injection of US$1billion contributed by the oil industry and the government, to cover the first five years of the cleanup project.

Government was asked to set up an Integrated Contaminated Soil Management Centre, to be built in Ogoniland and supported by hundreds of potential mini treatment centres that would treat contaminated soil and provide hundreds of job opportunities.

And finally, the report also recommends creating a Centre of Excellence in Environmental Restoration in Ogoniland to promote learning and benefit other communities impacted by oil contamination in the Niger Delta and elsewhere in the world.

While Ogoni anxiously awaits the Federal Government and other stakeholders to commence the cleanup of their environment, MOSOP and Ogoniland, according to Pyagbara, must remain a source of hope to the deprived, the dispossessed and other victims of marginalization.