Group Demands Transparency In Ogoni Clean-up Exercise 

The Programme Director of Citizens Trust Advocacy, a non governmental organi-sation, Barr. Lawrence Dube, has stated the need for Ogoni clean-up exercise to be well managed to avoid crisis in the future.
Dube who made this known in a chat with newsmen in Port Harcourt, last week, noted that there was a lot of corruption in the Ogoni clean-up process, adding that “Eleme people also said theirs was badly done”.
He said the discovery was made during the NGO’s first phase of community/representative engagement at the state and local government levels.
Dube also reiterated the need to build trust in the minds of the people by operating a transparent system in the clean-up exercise.
He said that the NGO, which is funded by Trust Africa through Kiisi Trust Foundation, had continued to educate the people on their constituency rights from their representatives both at the state and national levels.
He disclosed that the group’s work concentrated in educating the people to “move away from fighting and engage government and their constituency representatives in meaningful dialogue which always achieve results.
“We found out that the people were united in what they want, especially in Tai Local Government Area. The issue is that there is a big disconnection between the representatives and their constituencies”.
Dube said the NGO had concluded the first phase of its advocacy education which was very successful, even though COVID-19 disrupted part of the programme.
He said the next phase of the advocacy would be to interrogate the constitu-ency’s representatives on what they did with the constituency project fund to know if it met the needs of the people.
“There is the need for the people to make their needs known as a matter of priority. It is wrong for the representatives to just execute the project of their choice without considering the needs of the people”, he said.
Also speaking, the Senior Programme Officer of the NGO, Gladday Isaiah, commended the massive turn out of Ogoni people during the advocacy.
Isaiah stressed the need for continuous advocacy which, according to him, depends on the availability of fund.