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:
- To void any delay bothering on bureaucratic bottle necks that could lead to further enslavement of the people of Ogoni to the poisoned environment.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
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