President of MOSOP, Fegalo Nsuke urged the government to exonerate Saro-Wiwa and others in a statement to mark the 2023 Ogoni Day celebrations.
The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), has insisted that exonerating the nine Ogoni civil rights activists including Ken Saro-Wiwa who were murdered on November 10, 1995, must be among the conditions for resolving the Ogoni crises by the Nigerian government.
Saro-Wiwa, a writer and activist, heavily condemned the Nigerian military regime and the Anglo-Dutch petroleum company Royal Dutch/Shell for causing environmental damage to Ogoni land in his native Rivers State.
He was arrested in 1994 after four Ogoni chiefs were killed at a political rally. A special tribunal denounced by foreign human rights groups found Saro-Wiwa and others guilty of alleged complicity in the murders. He and eight fellow activists known as Ogoni 9 were executed by hanging, arousing international condemnation.
President of MOSOP, Fegalo Nsuke urged the government to exonerate Saro-Wiwa and others in a statement to mark the 2023 Ogoni Day celebrations.
He urged the Nigerian government to reconsider the tribunal judgement that sentenced the nine activists to death in 1995.
The activists were Saro-Wiwa, John Kpuine, Baribor Bera, Saturday Doobee, Nordu Eawo, Daniel Gbooko, Paul Levera, Felix Nuate, and Barinem Kiobel.
Nsuke also called for a proper restructuring of the Nigerian federation to guarantee the rights of the “Ogoni people to function within a Nigerian federation as Ogoni people.”
The statement read, “On January 4, 1993, we expressed this resolution to challenge the Nigerian oil industry and Nigeria's discriminatory laws that denied us the rights to a decent living and to benefit from our enormous natural endowments. 32 years later, not much has changed. We still face the discrimination and state repression is visibly inhibiting our access to freedom, especially our rights to free depression.
“Today, we have called off traditional public outings to mark the 2023 Ogoni day and urged our people to cope with celebrations in respective villages due to obvious security threats and the failure of the Nigerian state to provide security for our people. Indeed, we deeply regret the political hijack of our well-known peaceful celebration in an attempt to convert the event into a political campaign ground. A condemnable exploitation of our economic depravity thereby increasing the pressures of the Nigerian oil industry to subvert our people's will and desires to break free from a genocidal underdevelopment.
“In 2020, I was brutalized by state security and detained for two days before the Ogoni day. In 2021, we came under direct attack from the Nigerian security forces that went as far as shooting at us on this very day.
“In 2022, we were silenced by the ruling political party in our state which converted our day into a political rally. Our secretariat has very recently come under attacks from the local government council. We have had political tugs attached to the local council attack our people with machetes and inflict heavy injuries on our youths.
“Our decision to declare a lowkey celebration today is therefore to subvert any plans to violently attack innocent people and unleash the repressive instruments of terror on our people and thereafter turn accusations at us like they did to Ken Saro-Wiwa. It is not the first time we will be taking this action to protect our people. In 1994, 1995 and 1996, MOSOP called off public celebrations to protect our people from the repression of the state.
“Our decision is not a sign of weakness but part of our resolution to protect our people and maintain our commitment to non-violence. It is a sacrifice for peace and to frustrate the incriminating plans of oppressors. We will however take necessary legal actions including seeking legal remedies to break free from this repression.”
He added that the government has not been sincere in its execution of the Ogoni environmental cleanup exercise.
“The entire exercise lacks transparency and does not have any community-based representation as MOSOP has been inexplicably excluded from participation and monitoring of the agency's activities. We regret to state that we have no confidence in the exercise as has been conducted so far,” he said.
The group, therefore, called on the “Nigerian government to accept our proposals for the operation of the Ogoni Development Authority (ODA)”.
It also called for a “judicial review of the judgment of the Justice Ibrahim Auta's tribunal which sentenced Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others to death on November 10, 1995, with a view to exonerate the nine because they were unquestionably innocent”.
“We call for a proper restructuring of the Nigerian federation to guarantee the rights of the Ogoni people to function within a Nigerian federation as Ogoni people.
“We call for a more transparent environmental cleanup of Ogoni with preference for the provision of clean water to our people,” it added.