Thirty years ago, the Ogoni people’s struggle finally pierced through the iron curtain of the international community’s attention. It took the spilling of blood and emasculation of the Ogoni elite for the world to take note.
In April 1994, I had the privilege of encountering foremost author and Ogoni activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa, at a seminar in Enugu aimed at fashioning a common Igbo position as the nation prepared for the National Constitutional Conference, NCC, empanelled by General Sani Abacha. Saro-Wiwa was a guest speaker. The event offered him and former Biafra leader, Chief Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the opportunity to “reconcile” after playing historical roles in opposite sides of the Nigerian Civil War.
That was virtually Saro-Wiwa’s final public outing. A few days later, mayhem exploded in Ogoniland. Four prominent Ogoni leaders, known as the Ogoni Four – Albert Badey, Edward Kobani, Theophilus Orage and Samuel Orage – were gruesomely murdered. Their corpses were never found. Saro-Wiwa and eight other leaders of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People, MOSOP, were arrested, summarily tried and hanged for the alleged incitement that led to the lynching of the Ogoni Four.
The Ogoni elite had been torn into two mutually destructive camps. The Ogoni Four were accused of “compromising” the struggle by being soft on the Federal Government and Shell, the oil company responsible for the environmental devastation of Ogoniland. On the other hand, the Ogoni Nine were perceived to have precipitated the killing of their counterparts. The Abacha government ignored all entreaties to spare the lives of Saro-Wiwa and his colleagues.
These sad events placed the Ogoni struggle on the agenda of the United Nations which became gravely concerned over severe environmental pollution of Ogoniland after over 50 years of irresponsible oil exploitation. In 2006, the United Nations Environmental Programme, UNEP, sent experts to investigate the environmental disaster in Ogoniland and submit a report that would guide remediation. In 2011, the UNEP Report was submitted to President Goodluck Jonathan.
It was not until April 2022 when the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project, HYPREP, was created that the “Ogoni clean-up” programme concretely began. Because of the prolonged period of lip service paid to the project, many Nigerians, including major media stakeholders, never knew the amount of world class action going on under the leadership of Professor Nenibarini Zabbey at HYPREP’s Project Office in Port Harcourt. Indeed, when I sent a Facebook post from one of the shoreline reclamation project sites in Goi, Gokana LGA, people were pleasantly surprised that the clean-up was real and not mere propaganda.
We had two days of intensive tour of all four local government areas of Ogoniland – Tai, Eleme, Khana and Gokana. We visited the HYPREP regional water scheme at Kpoghor. About 30 communities whose water resources were polluted now enjoy potable water piped to them from these waterworks. In Ajen Okpori and Ogale in Eleme, we witnessed how the polluted soil and underground water were excavated and cleaned by experts, and land restored for normal human activity. Soil and underground water purification are going on simultaneously in 39 communities across Ogoniland.
The most eye-catching and obviously largest of the HYPREP projects is at Wiiyaakara in Khana LGA. The Centre of Excellence and Environmental Remediation, CEER, under construction by the China’s CCECC, is much like an international university town, complete with its research faculty buildings, residential zone, solar farm, sports complex and massive laboratories. It will incubate experts in all aspects of practical environmental science from all parts of the world.
By far the most exciting adventure for us was the visit to Goi in Gokana LGA. It is a shoreline community where technicians were labouring with machines to suck out spilled oil sludge from the muddy soil of the shoreline. The experts said the presence of live periwinkles in the mud meant the shoreline restoration was beginning to work. Shoreline restoration is taking place in five communities throughout Ogoniland.
We took a 45-minute boat ride to Bomu, also in Gokana LGA, where mangrove trees were being replanted after soil restoration. Each of us had the privilege to plant a mangrove tree! In a few years when the trees have matured, the mangrove ecosystem will hopefully be fully restored, provided that the HYPREP activities are sustained and re-pollution prevented. According to HYPREP officials, the Ogoni clean-up is just the first step towards the extension of same to all parts of the Niger Delta and beyond.
Ogoni people and Ogoniland are harvesting the benefits of their struggle. Ogoni has become a pacesetter in many ways. Other Niger Delta agitators sprang up due to the attention the Ogoni struggle elicited from all over the world. The Ogoni clean-up is being conducted mainly with the expertise and manpower of Ogoni indigenes. The Centre of Excellence will draw experts from all over the world. Even after the clean-up, the knowledge, expertise and experience that the Ogoni men and women are accumulating will be exported to service polluted communities throughout Nigeria and beyond.
HYPREP has trained 2,500 Ogoni youth with International Maritime Organisation, IMO, Levels 1 and 2 certification in shoreline clean-up and mangrove restoration, which they are freely deploying to make a living.
There is a saying: “No pain, no gain”. The Ogoni struggle attracted a scorched-earth military pacification mission on the people. The names of Abacha’s hit men, Major General Obi Umahi and Brigadier General Paul Okuntimo, will remain indelible in Ogoni history. They lost their best, the Ogoni Four and Ogoni Nine. But today, Ogoniland occupies a place of pride in all Niger Delta because of dividends that the HYPREP projects are bringing on the people and their ancestral land.
Where would the Ogoni people be today without the Ogoni struggle?