An Apex Ogoni ethnic representative, the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, MOSOP, has called on the government of Nigeria to show greater commitment to human rights.
In a message to the Ogoni people during a match against state-sponsored persecution in memory of the years of military repression during which state security agencies unleashed unprecedented violence against civil rights activists throughout Ogoniland, MOSOP urged the Nigerian government never to allow the experience of the Ogoni people repeat itself in any other part of the country.
MOSOP’s Publicity Secretary, Fegalo Nsuke, in a statement recalled that on June 6, 1994, the Nigerian government posted a brutish Major Paul Okuntimo to Ogoniland as head of the internal security task force (ISTF).
With funding from Shell Petroleum, the ISTF unleashed violence on the Ogoni people killing over 4,000 Ogonis. Regrettably, no one was charged for the murders neither has a probe been initiated into Shell’s complicity in these killings.
MOSOP used the opportunity to call on the Nigerian President to personally prevent further abuses in Ogoniland by some oil industry operators who continue to take advantage of the Nigerian military by attempting to forcefully resume oil mining in Ogoni without the people’s consent.
MOSOP also called on the Nigerian government to decriminalize the “Ogoni Nine” who were brutally and unjustly hanged by the Abacha administration on November 10 1995 and whose innocence has been widely acknowledged the world over.
The statement noted that their decriminalization is critical to any reconciliation process on the Ogoni conflict.
MOSOP further called on the Nigerian government to speed up the Ogoni cleanup process as well as take immediate steps to provide the people with safe drinking water to avert impending health calamities as the pollution in Ogoniland is already killing an increasing number of people daily.
