By: Felix Ikpotor
Some Ogonis under the aegis of Ogoni Development Drive (ODD) are now calling on President Muhammadu Buhari to sack Professor Philip Shekwolo as the acting project coordinator of the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project, HYPREP, for deviating from the core mandate of the interventionist agency.
They also called on the President to replace him with an Ogoni person as substantive project coordinator.
The group during a press conference in Bori, headquarters of Khana Local Government Area of Rivers State, led by Comrade Solomon Lenu and an ex-agitator, High Chief Solomon Ndigara said Shekwolo since he took over from the ousted PC, Dr. Marvin Deekil has been bribing people to support his bid to become substantive coordinator of the agency.
Lenu said: “I am sad today because the present PC of HYPREP, Prof Phillip Shekwelo, a former staff of Shell, the company at the epicenter of the oil crisis in Ogoni land, was made an acting PC to correct the wrongs generated by Dekil, his predecessor but he (Shekwolo) had since deviated to fest his nest and that of his surrogates on the common patrimony of the dying Ogoni people”.
“It will interest you to know that since his appointment in an acting capacity, rather than focused on what would bring solution to the myriad of problems confronting Ogonis, Prof Phillip Shekwolo only devoted his stay in HYPREP to bribing people to support his confirmation as the HYPREP substantive PC”.
ODD added: “ We call on President Muhammadu Buhari to remove Prof Phillip Shikwelo as the Acting PC of HYPREP and replace him with a qualified Ogoni son because we have a good number of Ogonis who are academically qualified with decades of field experience to head that agency”.
“That Philip Shekwolo is a Shell surrogate who in the past defended Shell that there was no oil spill in Ogoni-land, that if there was any, it was the orchestration of Ogonis themselves to blackmail Shell”.
“Phillip has shown that he is worse than the previous PC and as a shell surrogate, Ogónis are saying NO to him, and we are equally ready to sacrifice everything legally and otherwise available to us to ensure we stop this sacrilegious appetite of Shekwolo”.
The Ogoni group also urged the federal government to as a matter of urgency investigate how the cleanup money so far collected by HYPREP has been spent.
