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Ogoni Group Demands Immediate Release Of Sowore

The group described the arrest of Sowore as an attempt to intimidate citizens from expressing their likes and dislikes.

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The Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP) has condemned the arrest and detention of the publisher of Sahara Reporters, Omoyele Sowore.

The group described the arrest of Sowore as an attempt to intimidate citizens from expressing their likes and dislikes.

President of MOSOP, Fegalo Nsuke, said citizens should enjoy the rights to peaceful expression including peaceful protests. 

Rising from the steering committee meeting which held at the MOSOP secretariat in Bori, Nsuke called for the unconditional release of Sowore.

He noted that the "revolution protests" proposed by Sowore does not represent a threat to society but simply allows the government to consider other views on what it does.

Meanwhile, the group has strongly rejected calls by some persons who they described as agents of Shell for oil resumption in Ogoniland noting that the Ogoni environment cannot support oil mining at this time. 

A resolution of the MOSOP Central Committee, which serves as the highest decision-making organ of the organization, called on the Nigerian government and people to respect the political rights of the Ogoni people to self-determination.

Nsuke said, "Given our peculiar circumstances, especially the Shell-backed state repression which led to the death of over 4,000 Ogonis, oil resumption will be resisted by the Ogoni people and government response will be the usual deployment of soldiers who will shoot and kill the Ogoni people."

He said to avoid further deaths, the Ogoni people had resolved not to support the resumption of oil mining in the land at this time.

He also said it was unjust that the resources of the Ogoni people be carted away to build the rest of Nigeria leaving the Ogoni people in the most terrible conditions.

The MOSOP president asserted that the easy way out of the problem was for the Nigerian government and people to respect the Ogoni people, treat them fairly by respecting their political rights to self-determination as demanded in the Ogoni Bill of Rights.