Hundreds of Ogoni youths on Monday barricaded the Akpajo-Eleme axis of the East-West Road that leads to the Port Harcourt Refinery, Indorama Petrochemicals and the Onne Free Trade Zone.
The youths, who are members of the Ogoni Central Indigenous Authority, expressed dissatisfaction that the current administration led by President Muhammadu Buhari was not carrying them along in the proposed implementation of the United Nations Environment Programme Report in Ogoni land.
The protest, which began at about 7am, caused a gridlock along the East-West Road as commuters, motorists and motorcyclists had a hectic time in the traffic jam.
The youths specifically demanded that they should be part of the ongoing dialogue on the modalities being considered for the implementation of UNEP’s recommendation on the clean-up of Ogoni land.
The spokesman for the group, Dumbari Boodam, said any attempt to exclude them from the Ogoni clean-up process would cause trouble in the land.
Boodam explained that the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People was not working for the interest of the Ogoni people.
He stated that MOSOP was politicising the issue of the implementation of the UNEP Report, saying, “We want to be carried along in the process of the implementation of UNEP Report.
“Failure by the President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government to carry the group along will cause problem in Ogoni land. As far as we are concerned, MOSOP is not working for the interest of the Ogoni people.”
In a swift response, MOSOP condemned the protest, describing it as an ill-informed and unwarranted demonstration by a faceless group.
MOSOP’s Media Adviser, Mr. Bari-Ara Kpalap, cautioned Ogoni people and members of the public to ignore the group, adding that the protesters were being manipulated to draw Ogoni back.
He warned that the people of Ogoni would deal decisively with anybody attempting to truncate the smooth implementation of the recommendations of UNEP’s environmental assessment report on Ogoni land.
“Reports available to MOSOP have revealed that the demonstrators mischievously claimed that they were protesting (their) exclusion from the UNEP report implementation process.
“We condemn the action and reject the reason adduced, which smacks of desperation. As far as we are concerned, the protesters and their sponsors, who have earlier declared an unrecognized ‘Ogoni self-government’, are drowned in ignorance and dubiously seeking relevance and should be discountenanced.
“Negotiation, we all know, is always done on representative capacity and not by the entire community, organization or institution. In this case, all strata of the Ogoni society were fully represented in the multi-stakeholder engagement processes occasioning the President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government’s approval of actions to quicken the implementation of the recommendations of the UNEP report on Ogoni land.” ###
