Ogoniland appears to be heading for another major crisis following deep internal disagreements over the mandate of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) to clean up oil spill sites in the area.
Although the UNEP team led by the Director, Africa Regional Office, Dr Sekou Toure, arrived Port Harcourt on Monday for an assessment tour of the sites beginning Tuesday, key stakeholders to the crisis in Ogoni were conspicuously absent at the meeting hosted by the Rivers State Governor, Dr Peter Odili, at the Brick House.
Sources told our correspondent that the invitation extended to president of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP), Mr Ledum Mitee, and its Information Officer, Bari-ara Kpalap, was turned down by the duo.
Many notable politicians and community leaders attended the meeting but absence of the MOSOP activists heightened fears that the UN team could be stopped from undertaking the clean up of the oil sites.
Suspecting that the representation was not complete, the UN team was forced to convene a separate negotiation with the Ogoni umbrella organisation at the Presidential Hotel in Port Harcourt to agree on the modalities for the exercise. But at press time, it was clear not whether agreement had been reached between the two parties.
Toure, who spoke at the Brick House stakeholders meeting, said its job was highly technical and might not require local hands in Ogoni.
He was responding to calls by some of the stakeholders for the involvement of local hands in the eventual clean-up exercise, adding, “where the experience and expertise of Ogoni people would be needed, we will surely call them in.”
Urging the Ogoni people to give them the required cooperation and understanding to carry out a successful clean-up exercise, he said the job must be done according to the standards set by the global body.
But facilitator of the Presidential Committee set up by the Federal Government to reconcile Shell and the Ogoni nation, Rev. Fr Hassan Mathew Kukah, said contrary to views in some quarters, the clean-up was not a ploy to smuggle the company back to Ogoni.
“Let me also be clear that it is not a strategy for Shell to sneak into Ogoni. My assignment is to reconcile Shell with the Ogoni people. I believe we have achieved that reconciliation first within the Ogoni people.
“The second phase is to get Shell to do what statutorily it ought to do, to clean up the mess it created. The next phase, which is the future of Shell in the area, is left to the Ogoni to decide. And mine then is to pass on to the appropriate authorities,” he stated.