NIGER DELTA CIVIL SOCIETY COALITION PRESS STATEMENT ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF OGONI UNEP REPORT

Press Statement – Port Harcourt, August 9, 2015

 

NIGERIA: THE RIGHT TO LIFE, UNEP REPORT, AND THE OGONIS

 

The most broadly recognized human right is the right to life. Article 3 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights states that “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and the security of person.” This right is also captured in Ksentini Principle 2 (“human  rights, including civil and political ---rights, are universal, interdependent and indivisible.” ) and Principle 5 (everyone has “the right to freedom from pollution, environmental degradation and activities that adversely …threaten life.”) Whether the right to life is jeopardized by murder for voicing one’s opinions or a “slow” death from ecological poisoning, like Shell and others have visited upon the Ogoni people, etc, it is fundamental and universal.  

 

The African Charter on Human and people’s Rights in its Article 24 stated very clearly: “All peoples shall have the right to a general satisfactory environment favourable to their development.” In addition,  the Stockholm and Rio Declarations  unanimously acclaimed that “human beings… are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature” and specified that “ environmental protection shall constitute an integral part of the {sustainable} development process and cannot be considered in  isolation from it.”  The UN General Assembly in 1990 adopted a resolution by consensus in 1990 recognizing that “all individuals are entitled to live in an environment adequate for their health and well-being.”

 

The execution of activist Ken Saro-Wiwa along with the deaths of so many of other fellow activists, my the late Gen. Abacha military tyranny, demonstrate the tenuousness of the right to life as well as the disturbing  frequency with which social and environmental activists are deprived of that right.

 

The forgoing underscores the immense weight  which the NDCSC places upon  the critical  recent pronouncement by this federal government on the actual strategies for the immediate implementation of the abandoned UNEP Report, which has been gathering dust on the shelves of the federal government since it was published.

Moving forward, NDCSC strongly notes as follows:

 

 

1.              That the  impact of  ecological plunder on the peoples of Ogoni as duly recognized and reported by UNEP  has been devastating . The people have not only experienced downward spiral of impoverishment and social decline, but also near- genocide where the communities, citizens, everybody and everything was just dying slowly and surely. Environmental damage in Ogoni has direct effect on the enjoyment of a series of human rights, such as the right to life, to health, to a satisfactory standard of living, to sufficient food, to housing, to education, to work, to culture, to non-discrimination, to dignity and the harmonious development, to individual personality, to security of person and family and to peace.

 

2.              That the  previous  governments and its elites determined that the “national interest is best served by allowing such irresponsible corporate entities like Shell to pollute and poison the Ogoni’s homeland. The last administration especially, led by a President who should have known better, about the poisoned situation of the entire region, instead showed a willingness to sacrifice the interests, and even lives, of local people by  failing to urgently implement the same Report. By such calamitous failure,  the President Jonathan’s administration allowed further unnecessary deaths, contaminations, and diseases, as the voices and interests of oil multinationals prevailed over the livelihoods in Ogoni land and across the region.    For the administration, Ogoni communities and its peoples were in the way of progress, and that “the national interest” superseded individual and community concerns, even when that includes the deprivation of life.

 

Therefore, calls on the Federal government:

1. To void any delay bothering on bureaucratic bottle necks that could lead to further enslavement of  the people of Ogoni to the poisoned environment.
2.  To put  effective mechanism in place to ensure the  coordination of the   concerned citizens of the Ogoni kingdom to meaningfully participate in the process of the exercise in a most transparent and accountable manner, because environmental issues are best handled with the participation of all concerned.  Access to information and encouragement of public awareness to enable the said participation, cannot be overemphasized.
3. To ensure that all stakeholders, especially Shell Petroleum lives up to their global legal and social responsibility in accordance with the required  minimum standard of civilization in the interest of humanity and social license to operate.
4. That beyond Ogoni, the Niger Delta space is seriously endangered and need to set limits to what oil prospecting corporations can do to the lives of peoples and their environment through the urgent passing of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), which no doubt  will be an added advantage. It will be irresponsible, indeed, inhuman of  any civilized system to await the kind of catastrophe that befell Ogoni to act. It is the fundamental responsibility of any level of government to protect its citizens.
5. That  President Buhari  should insist on open and accountable government  through its determined effort on anti-corruption measures, to ensure and assure that funds received on behalf of the peoples of the region through states, local governments, and intervention agencies, such as Niger Delta Development Commission(NDDC) and Niger Delta Affairs Ministry,  is actually used to meaningfully and impactfully deliver public goods that better the livelihoods of the bottom-millions-poor, rather than lining the private pockets of political elites under his watch. The anti-corruption measures must teach lessons to succeed.

 

Finally, NDCSC calls on well meaning sons and daughters of Ogoni, especially the elites to eschew all manners of misunderstanding, and embrace  the critical moment  that beacons, by  uniting  the entire concerned peoples of Ogoni land, regardless of social status, and assure equal participation in the process of removing this most disastrous poison within.  This is absolutely no time for elite grandstanding, as all civilized minds interested in a healthy Ogoni environment globally,  shall see such as a greater poison than what Shell and others has done.

 

The Buhari administration is most commended, especially  in taking the bold decision to relieve the people of Ogoni of  the sentence of environmental death, so early in its assumption of  office.

 

Signed:

Anyakwee Nsirimovu

Chair