Stakeholders and environmental experts who attended the 79th posthumous birth day of late Ogoni activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa, in Port Harcourt, at the weekend, have lamented that Ogoniland is still an ecological disaster 25 years after the death of the activist.
Speaking at the event which was organised by the Ogoni Civil Society Stakeholders Forum (OSISOF) at the Atrium Event Centre in Port Harcourt, the guest speaker, Nnimoh Bassey, said it was regrettable that nothing substantial has been done to restore the battered environment of Ogoni despite the efforts of Saro Wiwa towards environmental justice in Nigeria.
The guest speaker, who was represented by an environmental activist, Comrade Celestine Akpobari, at the event said, the state of environmental pollution in Ogoni as a result of oil exploration had deteriorated beyond how it was before the UNEP investigation and recommendations.
He said, “before UNEP, the pollution level was five metres deep into the soil, but presently, it has worsened to 10 metres deep.”
The guest speaker, who described Ogoni as the metaphor of ecocide in Nigeria, called for environmental justice in Ogoni and by extension, the Niger Delta.
Also speaking, the special guest of honour, Engineer Olu Andah Wai-Ogosu, expressed deep concern about the increasing blight and destruction of the Ogoni environment which he said, is their  “ultimate heritage.”
He called on the Federal Government to address the issues of environmental and economic justice raised by the late Ogoni hero on the Ogoni Bill of Rights (OBR) presented to the Federal Government on November 1990.
Wai-Ogosu, who is the former National President of the Nigeria Environmental Society (NES), urged the Ogonis to be united against the tendencies of external infiltrations so as to achieve the objectives of the Ogoni struggle which Saro Wiwa and other Ogoni leaders lived and died for.
In her remark, another environmental rights activist, Dr Patience Osarojiji, called on the Federal Government to compel the Shell Petroleum Company to own up their ecological damage in Ogoni as a result of decades of oil exploratory activities in the area.
She said Ogonis had lost their means of livelihood to oil pollution and should be rehabilitated save them from denigrating poverty.
Earlier, the Chairman of the event, Prof Barineme Fakae, had commended the organisers for organising the memorial lecture to honour the late Ogoni activist.
Fakae called on the Federal Government to address the issues of minority and environmental rights in Nigeria in the interest of justice and equity.
In his remark, the organiser of the event and chairman of the Ogoni Civil Society Stakeholders Forum, Comrade Christian Lekia, said the event which was organised under the theme: ‘The Ken Saro Wiwa Leadership Legacies; What Lesson in Today’s Democratic Nigeria’ was to celebrate the legacies of Saro Wiwa.
He urged the Federal Government to exonerate Saro Wiwa and his slain colleagues of accusations levelled against them before their “ judicial murder.”

Taneh Beemene