We’re ready for exploration of oil in Ogoniland – Ogoni youths declare

Omiete Blessing

The National Youth Council of Ogoni People (NYCOP) said the group is presently negotiating to ensure the resumption of oil exploration in Ogoniland.

 

 

 

The youths are making this move barely 29 years after the murder of their prominent son Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others by the Gen. Sani Abacha-led military junta in Nigeria.

 

 

 

The youths made the disclosure, at the weekend, during a mega rally in Bori, headquarters of Ogoniland, in support of the Ogoni Economic Rebirth Project.

 

 

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In a statement signed by the NYCOP President, Barinuazor Emmanuel, Fred Elijah (Secretary), HRH Solomon Ndigbara and nine others, the youths said resumption of oil exploration should go alongside the Ogoni cleanup exercise handled by the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project, HYPREP.

 

 

 

 

Speaking, Emmanuel, expressed the fear that if the world moves away from fossil fuels to renewable energy, Ogoni oil would be a waste, hence the need to explore it now for the betterment of the younger generation.

 

 

 

 

He said: “Before 1993, we gave our best to Nigeria, we gave our oil for 35 years and the royalty that was to accrue to Ogoni people was One Hundred and Fifty Million United States Dollars, before late Ken Saro-Wiwa and other Ogonis raised the alarm.

 

 

 

 

 

“Now, the UNEP Report which later came out told us that it was going to take 25 to 30 years to remediate Ogoniland. Now the question is, how many of us would be alive in the next 25 to 30 years? Children born in 1990 are already 33 and 34 years old, they are graduates and some even fathers and mothers and they can’t negotiate for us because they knew nothing about what we passed through.

 

 

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“Also, after eight years, we believed that the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project, HYPREP, would have given us enough success by remediating at least 50 percent of Ogoni land.”

 

 

 

The NYCOP leader said “The basic thing now is that oil resumption must go alongside Ogoni cleanup because Ogoni is not the only polluted area, other places in Niger Delta are also polluted and HYPREP is supposed to move from Ogoni to clean other areas”.

 

 

 

 

He noted the need to start negotiating, stressing that the world is moving to renewable energy and if the agreement from COP23 is implemented, “what would be the fate of Ogoniland”.

 

 

 

 

Emmanuel lamented that Ogoni people have lost the best of their generation, brains, lands because of oil exploration, expressing that “the world should compensate Ogoni people by allowing us to benefit from our oil and gas because we have paid the supreme price that no other ethnic group has paid to save the environment and our oil, so that’s why the youths have come out today that we are informed, that we are moving international to where the world is going and oil resumption must go hand-in-hand with the clean up”.

 

 

 

 

While stating that Ogoni cannot be languishing in poverty while sitting on gold, the NYCOP leader noted that the Ogoni Economic Rebirth Project throws up a unique opportunity for Ogoni Exploration and Production Company to collaborate with a choice financial and technical partner of great repute in the industry to secure the lease to operate the assets within the Ogoni oilfields.

 

 

 

 

He added that the entire vision would be pursued within the ambit of the law till its actualisation.