By Obiabin Onukwugha
As Niger Deltans, especially activists continue to push for environmental justice for the region, an environmental body, Lekeh Development Foundation, has organised a programme tagged “Conversation with Ogoni Martyrs.
The programme, which is in commemoration of 28 years of the execution of 13 Ogoni leaders led by Ken Saro-Wiwa who were pushing for environmental justice against polluting oil companies held at the Auditorium Hall of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Port Harcourt on Wednesday.
Speaking on the aim of the programme, Executive Director, Lekeh Development Foundation, Friday Mbani, highlighted the need for a sustainable life, human rights and environmental justice in the Niger Delta region.
He said the topic, “Conversation with Ogoni Martyrs” was carefully chosen to encourage the younger generation to take up issues of environmental justice seriously. He said the event is trans-generational, as it brought together Ogonis who worked with the late Saro-Wiwa, and the present generation.
“To me, I actually believe that Ken is alive so we have to come together and organize a function to communicate with Ken.
“Ken was a messenger and he was killed but the idea and the message is alive. And that is why we organised this kind of event and to promote the Ogoni struggle, to promote unity among the young people, the youths, and to ensure that we work towards a total phase out of fossil fuels and demand for environmental justice and climate justice in the land.”
Recounting his ordeal during the trial of the Ogoni 9, former President of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP), Barr Ledum Mitee, called on the federal government to immortalize the late Ogoni environmentalist as pronounced by the administration of Olusegun Obasanjo.
Mitee, who spoke emotionally, encouraged the young generation to remain focused in order to achieve the aim of the struggle is the Niger Delta
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He said: “Right now, somehow voices appear to be discordant but I think it is important that those should be harnessed and found out what needs to be done to get justice. Because it does not mean that justice for the Niger Delta excludes other parts of the country. Because the justice that is being sought here is the same justice that every person is asking.
“The security challenges we are having in this country, whether it’s in the middle belt, whether it’s in the far north, starts with a shrilled voice for justice, which is ignored and is now metamorphosing to crisis. And that is what some of us need to do; associate ourselves with challenges that happen in any part of the country whether it’s in the north or here.
“Nigeria should be held to what has happened. Government is a continuum. During Obasanjo’s regime in one of his broadcasts, he promised that the sacrifices of these Ogoni 13 is being recognised and appropriate national monument will be named after them and I am saying government should love up to its words. That will also help to make the families and people’s of the Niger Delta feel that their sacrifices were not in vain.”
On his part, Prof Ben Nanee, who was Secretary to the MOSOP, regretted that the struggle had not yielded the expected result due to corruption and Mismanagement of resources.
“The issues that propelled Ogoni struggle were national in character. But they had to start from somewhere.
“Many of you do not know that it was the creation of MOSOP that birthed other struggles.
“I will encourage the young generation to develop a vision. The very issues that Ogonis were fighting for, the environmental issues, representation in government, accountability in government; all those things are still there with us today.
“It is sad. The struggle that we launched so we could have good governance, so that we could have a government that is accountable to the people. We have 13% derivation which came out of the struggle of Ogoni and other parts of the Niger Delta but what has it become today. Can you tell us what the 13% which goes to the oil producing states have produced in any of the states. That was not what the Ogonis died for.
“We stood for accountability, we stood for honesty, today we all know what is happening in Nigeria including our own states. When some of us sit down and watch what is happening we have to weep. That various states of the Niger Delta have been privatised by their respective governors, nothing is happening, that is the kind of situation we struggled against but Nigerians didn’t seem to understand the essence of our struggle”, he stated.
