...Insists on creation of Bori State
The movement for the survival of Ogoni people, MOSOP, has petitioned President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the governments of the United States and United Kingdom among others to prevail on the National Assembly to consider the creation of Bori state in the ongoing constitutional amendment and restructuring process.
MOSOP said that the creation of a separate state for Ogoni people was overdue, saying that the Ogoni People stand on the recommendations of the Willink Commission as the only condition to remain in Nigeria, so the Ogoni Bill of Rights must be adopted and included in the Nigerian Constitution.
In a petition jointly signed by DineBari Augustine Kpuinen, President of MOSOP-USA and fourteen others, the group said that "Ogoni had suffered enough", adding that the kingdom's 65 years of agony began in 1958 when the first oil well was struck in Ogoni and produced in commercial quantities.
"The oil mining activities brought about enormous dehumanizing conditions that resulted in suffering in Ogoni to date. This has brought about Sixty-five years of ecological war, 65 years of land degradation, the worst polluted environment in the world, economic strangulation and political marginalization, sixty-five (65) years of internal colonization, domination and annihilation, sixty-five years of military intimidation, genocide, and oppression, and sixty-five years of spiritual, physical, psychological, and emotional trauma.
"The spirit of our forebears forbids us to continue in perpetual bondage, suffering internal colonization in Nigeria.
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"Ogoni People have continued to be subjected to slavery. These are people so blessed by God and nature but being treated like outcasts in Nigeria. Ogoni has no true representatives in the government, and only government surrogates are imposed on the people.
"Ogoni still lives in the worst polluted environment in the world, with no pipe-borne water (clean water), no electricity, no airport, and no university. The roads into Ogoni are dead traps, with no sources of livelihood, no medical facilities, and government infrastructures.
"Ogoni People are not considered good enough for any progressive development but are killed by the same government that should protect the indigenes from external aggressors through government surrogates".
MOSOP-USA warned that any restructuring of the nation without a politically autonomous state for Ogoni within the Federal Republic of Nigeria "would be viewed as the declaration that (a) Ogoni extinction is a policy in Nigeria, (b) Ogoni is not recognized as a people in Nigeria, (c) neither is she considered part of the nation and (d) therefore, they should be allowed to make their own choices".
The group however advised the Nigerian President, the Senate President and his cabinet, and the House of Representatives that "granting politically autonomous states to every ethnicity is the only solution to Nigeria's multiple problems and keeping it together as one nation. If not, the nation will soon collapse unless its leaders listen to the voice of wisdom", it said.
