The Ken Saro-Wiwa Associates (KSWA) has sworn-in a 10-man committee to drive the 2018 Ogoni Martyrs Day Celebration, tasking them to do a thorough job to ensure a successful programme.
Inaugurating members of the committee in Bori, headquarters of Khana Local Government Area of Rivers State, National Coordinator of KSWA, Chief Gani Topba, charged them to be unique in their approach to the 23rd Ogoni Martyrs Day celebration, which begins November 10.
According to him, the celebration was necessary to remember the killing of Ogoni prominent sons, occasioned by the activities of Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC).
The KSWA national coordinator said apart from Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa, thousands of other Ogoni sons and daughters were also killed, and urged the committee to accommodate all the martyrs in the 2018 Ogoni Day celebration.
In her remarks, representative of Amnesty International, Ms Babara Taft, who acknowledged the rights group’s work with late Ken Saro-Wiwa in early 1990s, agreed that cleaning an oil-impacted site has never been easy anywhere in the world. She cited Arizona as one of the places that has peculiar environmental challenges like the Ogoni land and the Niger Delta, saying, “We know that it is difficult to clean oil spill. But we will teach them how to do the clean-up”.
Taft urged the government to get involved with the clean-up exercise, explaining that AI was collaborating with other bodies to ensure justice for the polluted lands across the globe, including Ogoniland in Nigeria.
“We will interface with the International Community, especially USA and Canada to ensure that the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report is implemented”, she assured Ogoni people.
Source: TheTide