By Godwin Anene
The umbrella body for the Ogoni people of Rivers State, Movement for Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), on Thursday, faulted President Muhammadu Buhari’s directive moving the supervision of the Ogoni Cleanup exercise to the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs as ill-advised.
MOSOP flayed the presidential directive as inconsequential, saying that the current cleanup exercise lacks credibility and riddled with corruption.
The new transfer of supervision of the Ogoni Cleanup exercise is the third time the administration of President Buhari will be moving it to different ministries.
Buhari had first moved its supervision from Ministry of Petroleum Resources to Ministry of Environment and now Niger Delta Affairs.
But reacting to the development, President of MOSOP, Fegalo Nsuke, while faulting the decision, said the directive was inconsequential, insensitive and diversionary to addressing corruption allegations hanging on the cleanup exercise.
Nsuke, in a statement issued by MOSOP’s Secretary General, Alex Akori, said Buhari’s order was mere deliberate tactics to frustrating investigation of corrpt allegations against officials overseering the cleanup exercise.
According to him, “In the thinking of MOSOP, the directive only reflects internal skimmishes of government departments to outsmart each other and unlikely to address the corruption that has marred the Ogoni cleanup exercise.
“It is MOSOP’s opinion that President Mohammadu Buhari could have been wrongly advised on this decision. The cleanup, originally under supervision of the petroleum ministry was moved to the environment ministry under Mr. President and now has been moved to the Niger Delta ministry which makes no difference if gaps that have given rise to the alleged looting are not addressed.
“Supervising ministries do not make any difference but the outcome of the exercise is what matters. The entire cleanup exercise at the moment is seen as highly corrupt and lacking in credibility and transparency.”
Speaking further, Nsuke posited, “The right steps to take at this time would have been to halt further funding of the cleanup programme and investigate allegations we have made.
“It is unfortunate that the government appears to be evading critical questions of corruption in the Ogoni cleanup which are monumental. We have raised issues of corruption in Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) and the government cannot evade these allegations.
“We also insist that HYPREP cannot account for at least $200million (Two Hundred Million Dollars) and this is not the kind of figure a government that claims to be fighting corruption can overlook.
“So, the right thing to do is to halt all funding for the cleanup exercise and look into our allegations rather than switching supervisory ministries. We believe Mr President has been ill advised in this circumstance, on this issue.”
