…To convene stakeholders meeting soon
By: Felix Ikpotor
Following the purported invitation of the Nigeria Petroleum Development Company (NPDC) by a group known as the Ogoni Liberation Initiatives (OLI), to resume oil mining in Ogoniland, the apex socio-cultural organisation in the area, KAGOTE has said that no individual or group has such mandate.
President of KAGOTE, Honourable Emma Deeyah who stated this at a press conference in Port Harcourt on Friday, condemned in strong terms the action of the group.
He further warned the group to stop forthwith its activities as it does not have the mandate to represent the Ogonis in any negotiation that involves resumption of oil mining in the area.
The KAGOTE boss said a broad-based consultative meeting involving all stakeholders in the area would soon be convened to chart a way forward.
“I will like to say that the OLI as they call themselves don’t have the legitimate mandate and capacity to invite any group to come and mine oil in Ogoniland and we want to say to them that henceforth, they should stop all such activities,” Deeyah said.
He noted that although, they can’t dictate for the government on which ever company to allow into Ogoni but said any company that wants to mine oil in the area must engage with the entire people.
He added: “We cannot decide which company comes and which will not come but we have a long history when it comes to oil exploration. We have lost our best, there have been killings and all other destructions because of this course and we believe that such a process if the government is actually desirous of mining oil in Ogoniland should consult. It should be a process of dialogue with the people.
We have an illustrious son of ours, Senator Magnus Abe who is on the board of Nigeria National Petroleum Development Corporation (NNPC), the parent company of NPDC, yet he is not in the picture of this development. We have Senator Barry Mpigi, also an indigene in the Senate, we have the Rt. Hon. Dum Dekor in the House of Representatives, and they are not in the picture of this development. Now those people who claim to come from NPDC or whatever, do they actually come from Nigeria? Don’t they come from places? We even have local government chairman on ground and we have never heard that any of the council chairmen have ever involved in any of these processes. We also have the informal leadership.
In the next few days we are going to call a broad based meeting of Ogoni people of all shades of opinion so that we can chart the way forward. It is in that meeting we are going to agree on what we expect . We rejected Shell, so if another organization is going to come, what better thing are they going to do better than Shell?
Deeyah debunked the purported endorsement of the group by stakeholders in the area.
“There is a document being bandied around saying that KAGOTE, Gbo Kabaari and Supreme Council of Ogoni Traditional Rulers have been consulted and that they have given their mandate to this people to go about what they were doing and I drew the attention of His Royal Majesty, King Godwin Gininwa to it and he said his signature was forged and that the letter headed they used was even an old one, so I want to believe that he didn’t do that and we didn’t also gave them any mandate,” he said.
He alleged that there are fifth columnists who want to cause crisis in the area to benefit from it.
“All they want is to come there and people will resist them and there would be killings again and then they will say Ogoni people don’t want Federal Government to mine oil in the area,” he said.
On the insecurity ravaging communities in Ogoniland, the KAGOTE leader said they have met with security agencies and given them the mandate to arrest and prosecute whoever disturbs the peace in the area.
He expressed the hope that soon the insecurity plaguing the area will be a thing of the past.
