- Urges Kingdoms, Chapters to Be Alert For Peaceful Resistance
Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) has condemned in the strongest terms, a planned crackdown on civil rights campaigners and lovers of freedom seeking justice for the Ogoni people in Nigeria. This follows a nocturnal meeting between a fake representative of MOSOP, an impostor said to be representing MOSOP and some top officials of the Nigerian government who have pecuniary interests in the Ogoni oil and gas resources, including a serving minister, yesterday in Abuja.
In a statement by the chairmen of the MOSOP Kingdom Coordinators and Chapter Leaders Forum, Celestine Viula, MOSOP said it has been further informed that the said impostor is a fraudulent Ogoni who is said to have been rusticated from the University of Port Harcourt in the late 1990s for secondary school Certificate forgery and happens to be one of those free radicals vulnerable to be exploited by agents of government and the oil industry.
The statements continues:
Our information reveal that the authorities have been rattled by MOSOP’s proposal for the operation of an Ogoni Development Authority which seeks to secure a fair proportion of Ogoni resources to be set aside for Ogoni development and instead seeking avenues to sustain the discriminatory practice which was operated under Shell and offered no benefits nor commitments to the people.
The MOSOP Kingdom Coordinators and Chapter Leaders Forum therefore urge every Ogoni community, chapter coordinators and all MOSOP affiliates to immediately commence sensitization of local communities on the dangers posed by this Abuja genocidal mission of forceful oil resumption against our lives and existence.
We urge every Ogoni community to be conscious and alert to resist every move to force oil production in Ogoni without a broad-based discussion on how best this should be undertaken so as not to pose any threats to the lives of our people.
Convinced that MOSOP’s proposal for dialogue on how best to operate the Ogoni Development Authority is in the best interest of all parties and the most acceptable way to resolve the lingering conflicts, we urge the Ogoni people to be very vigilant, peaceful and to uphold our age-long principles of non-violence in this very costly struggle for survival and to resist every move that endangers the lives of our people.
MOSOP urges the Nigerian authorities to call its officers to order and to back down on every plot with potential to endanger the lives and security of our people. We further urge the government to accept the path of a transparent engagement that will eliminate the dangers of another state-backed repression against the Ogoni people.
