Youth Carpet Buhari Over Ogoni Clean-Up

Three years after the celebrated announcement of the clean-up of Ogoniland by President Muhammadu Buhari, youths of the area have repeatedly accused the President of playing politics with the exercise.
Speaking with The Tide, last Monday in Bori in an interview on the current state of Ogoniland and the purported clean-up of the environment allegedly messed up by Shell Petroleum Development Company Limited (SPDC), President of a Non-Governmental Organisation in the area (NGO), Ogoni Development Initiative (ODI), Dr. Cromwell Nukabari Badey accused the President and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) of deceiving Ogoni people by not keeping to its change agenda of cleaning the environment as widely announced.
Badey maintained that President Buhari had immediately after assumption of office on May 29, 2015 openly announced his readiness to implement the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) Report o cleaning of Ogoniland.
Dr. Badey said: “After a study of the approach, loud pronouncements and long delays adopted by the government on the globally celebrated implementation, the Ogoni people are not persuaded about the sincerity of the President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government, whose earlier promises were designed to score cheap political points”.
He explained that after the July 28, 2015 consultative meeting in Abuja chaired by the former Head of Service of the Federation, Danladi Kifasi, the Federal Government was yet to release funds to kick start the process.
According to him, “since the announcement by President Buhari of immediate action on the release of funds, the Federal Government has seemingly dosed off on the programme without regard to the health hazards and increasing mortality rate resulting from the long polluted Ogoniland”.
As he puts it, “the silence by Buhari and his APC government has raised suspicion among the Ogonis that the Federal Government in collaboration with SPDC has opted for their usual strategy of divide-and-rule to set the Ogoni leaders and the people against themselves and also employing gradual frustration of the oil clean-up programme to force the collective loyalty of the Ogoni nation to join the ruling party in Nigeria.”

Bethel Toby