UN’s NIGER DELTA REPORT: Ogoni, ERA, Mitee, reject report

Vanguard

6 August 2011

UN’s NIGER DELTA REPORT: Ogoni, ERA, Mitee, reject report

Reactions from Nige rian groups and individuals following the release of a landmark UN report detailing oil pollution that may require the world’s biggest ever clean-up by Nigeria’s government and oil giant Shell have put the government and the oil giant under heavy pressure.

+++

“The report finally confirms what we have been saying all these years; that the entire Niger Delta region, not just Ogoni land, has been severely damaged due to oil exploitation,” said Nnimmo Bassey, director of Environmental Rights Action (ERA). But I’m not optimistic that the multinationals and government will change their ways of operating in the country despite the fact that the report said that Shell did not meet its own required standards of operations.”

Said Ledum Mitee, former president of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP). “In our view, Shell has just been able to purchase, at huge cost and time, another four years of doing nothing, absolutely nothing, to clean the environment.” But prominent Lagos lawyer, Femi Falana thinks it provides an opportunity for people to make legitimate demands.” An NNPC official told international news agency Reuters that the NNPC would not pay the $1bn asked for the clean up saying the clean up has already been done.

At a MOSOP Emergency General Meeting in Bori, headquarters of Ogoniland last Thursday, the group in a statement said though it welcomed the awareness the UNEP, it alleged that the report was bought “with $9.5 million by the polluters, including Royal-Dutch/Shell, think this now provides an opportunity for people to make legitimate demands.

“UNEP produced the report, which was paid for by Shell, at the request of the Nigerian government. “ MOSOP is challenging the integrity of the report, recalling an earlier confession by UNEP team leader Mike Cowing that the report has been informed by data and information solely supplied by Shell and the government, without actual study on the ground.”

The statement signed by its spokesman and President/Spokesman, Dr. Goodluck Diigbo, the purported UNEP meeting with 23,000 Ogonis is only on paper, and there is no evidence to prove who attended, what review was done, agreements reached, if any and Ogonis who signed such agreements as proof of public participation as part of the Environmental Impact Assessment Study, EIAS due process.”