By Faith Kordoo
The story of how the once fertile, bountiful, oil rich and human friendly environment of Ogoni was put in jeopardy due to the pollution caused by activities of Oil companies in the region is no news.
Ogoni is an ethnic group located in Rivers State on the coast of the Gulf of Guinea, east of the city of Port Harcourt. It consists of 4 Local Government Areas, viz; Khana, Gokana, Eleme and Tai. The Ogonis are known to be hardworking people blessed with fruitful land and water, they survive mainly on fishing and farming.
As with most places in the Niger Delta, in 1956, oil was discovered in Ogoni land and exploration of the supposed gift from nature began in 1958, between 1976-1991, a 15 year period, there were reportedly 2, 976 oil spills of about 2.1million barrels of oil in Ogoniland, accounting for about 40% of the total spills of the Royal Dutch/Shell Company Worldwide.
This supposed gift from nature which attracted multinational oil companies to the once quiet and reserved Ogoniland, giving the people hope of a better living ended up taking away a very large chunk of their means of livelihood, making most places in the region inhabitable and leaving the people of Ogoni in great misery.
The exploration came with great pollution of land and water, causing immense environmental degradation and violation of human rights. The plights of the Ogonis is what led the great patriot and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa to form the Movement Of The Survival Of The Ogoni People (MOSOP) in 1990.
He, alongside other Ogoni leaders began the campaign for greater control over oil and gas resources on their land, for economic development and autonomy over their affairs, all these demands were summed up in the 1990 ‘Ogoni Bill Of Rights’ addressed to the Nigerian Government.
MOSOP’s activities and resistance from host communities led to the halt of SPDC production in Ogoni land and their withdrawal from the area in 1993.
18 years later in 2011, an assessment of over 200 locations in Ogoni land was carried out by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and it was discovered that the impact of the 50 years of oil production in the region was deeper than expected, as the spills, oil flaring and waste discharge has made the soil inviable for agriculture, following the findings, a massive clean up was recommended and a maximum of 30years was estimated as the time span before Ogoni land could be rehabilitated to it’s full potentials.
SPDC might have stopped oil production in Ogoni land but Ogoni continues to serve as a transit route for pipelines transporting both SPDC and third party oil products from other areas, giving room for vandalization of these pipelines by some misguided youths, resulting in more pollution and misery in Ogoni land.
It took the Nigerian Government 5 years to inaugurate the clean up of Ogoni land which was recommended by *UNEP* in 2011. It’s been 2 years since the clean up was flagged off and the people of Ogoni are yet to witness the commencement of this long awaited clean up.
The Federal Government has however, fixed August 2018 for the commencement of the Ogoni land Clean up remediation which was flagged off in June, 2016.
We do not know if this extremely long over due clean up will happen-we sure hope it does, as at when promised, because we are fully aware that about 60 years later, the people of Ogoni still lavish in misery, as the effects of environmental pollution and degradation continues to take a toll on them, leaving them at the mercy of all sorts of diseases and ailments; wondering if the *OIL* was a gift or a curse.
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