Friday, 29th March 2024
To guardian.ng
Search
Breaking News:

Ogoni peace summit will bring unity,  investment, say Saro-Wiwa associates

By Ann Godwin, Port Harcourt 
26 February 2018   |   3:31 am
The National Co-ordinator of the group, Gabi Topba, who stated this at the weekend during the formal presentation of a 12-point communique drafted by the Ogoni Peoples Assembly, said the Ogoni people re-affirmed their desire to remain part of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Ken Saro-Wiwa

The proposed peace summit in Ogoniland billed for March 30, this year, will bring unity and investment in the oil-devastated area, the Ken Saro-Wiwa Associates (KSA) has said. 

The National Co-ordinator of the group, Gabi Topba, who stated this at the weekend during the formal presentation of a 12-point communique drafted by the Ogoni Peoples Assembly, said the Ogoni people re-affirmed their desire to remain part of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.He added that the summit, which would attract all the service chiefs, would create a platform for the Ogoni people to demand for their quota. 

According to him: “The summit will ensure that if there are army training, recruitment in the police, in the military, in the DSS, we should be able to get our quota. That will also create wealth for our people. We assure people that they can come here to invest; it is not about oil, there are things to do in this land to create jobs for our people.”

He stated that the communique demanded that the Federal Government should urgently rebuild all Ogoni communities that were destroyed by the Nigerian military between 1993 and 1998, resettle and rehabilitate all Ogoni refugees in Nigeria and in the Diaspora and victims of human rights violation during the period.

The communique reads in part: “That Royal Dutch Shell Plc and its Nigerian subsidiary, SPDC, establish and implement an appropriate and adequate compensation mechanism consistent with the requirement of international law and industry best practices to compensate the Ogoni people for the environmental degradation, health impairment and loss of livelihoods to which they have and continued to be subjected through the decades of SPDC’s oil and gas operations in Ogoniland.

“The Ogoni people demand the speedy implementation of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report and recommendations on oil-spill clean-up in the Ogoni environment.”Topba said the communiqué would be communicated to President Muhammadu Buhari and the embassies of countries that are in partnership with the Nigerian government. 

In this article

0 Comments