The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni (MOSOP) has dismissed claims by the Federal Government that 17 polluted sites have been certified clean in Ogoni. Nigeria’s Environment minister yesterday claimed that 17 sites have been cleaned and certified.
Reacting to the minister’s claims, President of MOSOP, Fegalo Nsuke said the Federal Government ought to be ashamed of what is happening in Ogoni. He said you cannot certify anything when the primary activities which require addressing the water crises have not been undertaken. Nsuke further said it is a shame that 10years after a critical report was released about what endangered people’s lives, the government was still shamelessly telling people 17 sites out of over 100 polluted sites were cleaned.
Nsuke questioned how the government cleaned and certified the area when basic clean water has not been provided for the Ogoni people and underground water in the entire Ogoni and beyond have been polluted.
He however said he was not surprised to hear the minister make such claims. According to him, when you are dealing with a corrupt system especially one that involves Shell, everything can go wrong.
Nsuke further said if companies that did not meet the standards set for the Ogoni cleanup project made the list of contractors for the remediation exercise, then we can expect anything to happen. In Fact, they will soon declare Ogoni free from pollution even when we still drink poison as water”
“Why won’t they claim they have cleaned Ogoni when they have wrecked the process with internal corruption. How do you certify an area to be clean when the people still drink polluted water caused by oil spills” he asked.
The MOSOP President said the thing about the Ogoni cleanup program is that it’s all full of lies. He said “just like the government claimed there was no damaging pollution in Ogoni until the UNEP report was released, they will tell you it’s been cleaned even when we still live with crude oil in the soil and we will prove that to them”
Nsuke accused the Nigerian government of tolerating corruption in the Ogoni cleanup exercise despite public outcry noting that the Ogoni cleanup program has exposed systemic corruption and indecency in government especially HYPREP.
The MOSOP leader further said “the Ogoni people do not know what HYPREP is doing. We are not involved with their work, we are not consulted and we make no inputs so they decide what they want to do and tell the public whatever they wish”
He advised the government to address the failures and massive corruption in HYPREP, return to the drawing board and conduct a proper assessment and cleaning of polluted Ogoni.
