allAfrica.com: Nigeria: Environment – MOSOP Protests Against Shell

This Day (Lagos)
11 December 2007
Ahamefula Ogbu
Port Harcourt

The Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP) yesterday blocked the entrance of Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) in Port Harcourt in protest of what they called human and Environmental rights abuses of their people by Shell.

The protest which saw about 250 Ogonis protesting in front of the oil giant coincided with the celebration of the United Nations Human Rights Day where they vowed that Shell was not going to return back to Ogoniland.

The march which was led by the Information Officer of MOSOP, Mr. Bia-ara Kpalap who said that they had no alternative than to make public the negative impact that SPDC has visited on their people.

He said that since Shell entered Ogoni land, they have lost human and natural resources, adding that they were tired of living without peace which was why they had asked the federal government to give the wells in Ogoni to another company.

There was almost a breakdown of law and order when a Shell staff who had removed his name tag came out to where the police were dialoguing with the Ogonis and asked them to use tear gas on the protesters.

This angered the youths who said they have always used peaceful means of making their grievances known. They insisted that they would go into the Shell compound and meet with the Managing Director. The police however pleaded with them to select five representatives who will go inside and meet with the officer in-charge of their facilities in Ogoniland which MOSOP turned down. Kpalap dismissed the peace and reconciliation efforts of the Reverend Father Mathew Hassan Kukah Committee, saying he became partisan in the matter and started relating to Shell without recourse to them on the matters of common interest.
 
He also dismissed the remediation effort by United Nations Environmental Agency (UNEP) as it was being carried out secretly without the knowledge of the Ogonis which he said smeared the effort. “We are using December 10th, International Human Rights Day, to associate our call for justice with the pending 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The United Nations has long recognised the injustices in Ogoni and the Niger Delta as a whole. We are calling on the UN and the international community to recognise that abuses are continuing and that injustices in the name of oil production must end now.

“We associate ourselves with all those opposing gas flaring, which has been a curse on the Niger Delta for 50 years. It has damaged our environment daily, and now it is contributing to climate change which threatens all of Africa.

“We cannot accept that oil companies can tell the international community and the public that they are concerned about climate change and then ask for an extension of gas flaring in the Niger Delta. It is hypocrisy beyond words.”Our stance is also informed by reports, endorsed by our own President, which say that agriculture, which is the lifeblood of our communities, will inevitably be impacted by climate change”, they charged.

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