By: Felix Ikpotor
Caroline Barine Nagbo, a former member of the interim management committee of the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, has joined other Ogonis in reacting to the call by some leaders of the area on Rivers State governor, Nyesom Wike to lead talks with Federal Government in the planed resumption of oil exploration in Ogoniland.
Phspectator reports that last week, some Ogoni leaders led by a former president of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People, MOSOP, Barrister Ledum Mitee and Senator Lee Maeba while on a visit to Wike in Government House, Port Harcourt adopted him to lead talks with the federal government on resumption of oil exploration in the area.
But Nagbo, a former leader of Federation of Ogoni Women Association, FOWA, said asking Wike or any outsider to lead the talks on behalf of the Ogonis is not necessary as none of this other ethnic groups shared the pains with the Ogonis during the Sani Abacha led military junta.
The Ogoni activist and politician who stated this in a statement she personally signed wondered where leaders of other ethnic groups where when Ogonis were being persecuted.
She said inviting an outsider to speak on behalf of the Ogonis would amount to killing the fallen heroes another time.
“When Ogonis were been persecuted alone and hanged, where were our neighbours and the other ethnic nationalities and their leaders?
Did any of them sympathise or commiserate with the Ogonis?
And has any other ethnic group in the state conceded any position to the Ogoni based on our past bitter experience that brought about OMPADEC and NDDC?
Did anyone ever mention that it was the Ogoni struggle that led to the political turn around that produced the first Niger Delta President of Nigeria?” She queried.
Nagbo added: “If all the few questions above are all in ‘No and None’ affirmations; then what are these ‘internet designs some persons are trying to web out on Ogoni people and Ogoni oil?”.
“We were hanged alone and our leaders were killed alone, so why looking and engaging non Ogonis to preside over our talks on oil for which our best were sacrificed??
She insisted that: “If by Pre -1990, Pre-1994 to 1995 and beyond; anyone who never identified with the sorrows, pains, tears of that era, should not, I repeat, should not discuss the issues which he or she never partook in, on behalf of Ogoni” .
The Rivers APC stalwart warned that, “playing prodigality at old age with the huge unattended sacrifices of our heroes is not only sacrilegious but despicable, hence the worth of our own educational achievements shall be weighed on the scale of the intelligent decisions we take on behalf of the late heroes, the living and the unborn Ogoni generations and posterity awaits us all in judgement!
