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MOSOP dismisses FG’s claims on Ogoni clean-up exercise

The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni (MOSOP) has dismissed the claim by the Federal Government that 17 polluted sites in Ogoniland have been cleaned-up, stressing that up till now, the people of Ogoni still lack clean water despite the fact that it was provided for in the UNEP report. The President of MOSOP, Fegalo Nsuke said that the Federal Government ought to be ashamed of what is happening in Ogoni where the preliminary stage of the clean-up exercise had been abandoned years after the kick-off of the programme. Nsuke further said that it is a shame that 10 years after a critical report was released about what endangered people’s lives, the government was more interested in deceiving people that no fewer than 17 sites out of over 100 polluted sites had been cleaned up.

He, however, argued that how did the government clean and certify the area when basic clean water had not been provided for the Ogoni people, while underground water in the entire area and beyond has been polluted. Nsuke, who noted that the Federal Government had continued to tolerate corruption in the Ogoni clean-up exercise despite public outcry, noted that the Ogoni clean-up programme had exposed systemic corruption and indecency in government. Nsuke further said that companies that did not meet the clean-up standard made the list of contractors for the remediation exercise, stressing that Ogoni people are not expecting anything serious in the exercise.

He said: “Why won’t they claim they have cleaned up Ogoni when they have wrecked the process with internal corruption. How do you certify an area to be clean when the people still drink polluted water caused by oil spills? “Just like the government claimed there was no damaging pollution in Ogoni until the UNEP report was released, they will tell you it has been cleaned even when we still live with crude oil in the soil and we will prove that to them.

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