Oil Contamination: Ogonis raise alarm over food shortage in communities

As the United Nations marked World Food Day recently, the Ogoni socio-cultural group, Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, MOSOP, raised the alarm over what it described as “deepening food crisis occasioned by decades of hydrocarbon contamination of the Ogoni environment”.
MOSOP warned that the Ogoni people might go extinct if the food challenges and the worsening environmental question in the area were not urgently addressed.
President of MOSOP, Legborsi Saro Pyagbara, while briefing newsmen to mark World Food Day, demanded from the Nigerian government the immediate take-off of the Ogoni environmental restoration exercise, which he said “has been over delayed against the spirit of agreements reached by stakeholders at the Abuja negotiations”.
He added: “There are thus growing concerns, and tension is building in Ogoni communities over the delay largely seen as attempt to undermine environmental justice for the people. We again warn politicians against politicisation of the matter,” he said.
He aded: “However, MOSOP is concerned that while Ogoni bleeds and is suffocating under Shell’s lethal ecological war in the area, which has inflicted deepening livelihood challenges on the people including declining agricultural harvest occasioning food and water insecurities, impoverishment and deaths; it has arrogantly kept blackmailing the Ogoni people with spurious declarations accusing Ogoni of responsibility for her environmental woes to divert attention from its present atrocities in Ogoni.”
“We insist that Shell is responsible for the environmental crisis in Ogoniland and until it restored our ruined environment it will know no sleep.
“We are therefore using the occasion of this celebration to call on all men of goodwill including lovers of peace and safe environment to intervene to save the Ogoni people from the cruel and dreaded clutches of the international oil corporation.”