Oil Exploration: Tinubu Means Well For Ogoniland, Says Minister
The Minister of Regional Development Abubakar Momoh says President Bola Tinubu is committed to the development of Ogoniland, listing efforts by the current administration to better the lives of the people.
According to Momoh, President Tinubu means well for Ogoniland, Rivers State.
“The President is a visionary and he understands the feelings of the people. I can say that for the past one year, Mr President has had two different meetings with the leaders of the Ogoni people – traditional rulers, political leaders, religious leaders, and the rest of them – all in a bid to bring about peace in the region so that there’ll be commencement of oil exploration in that place, the Minister said.
“What I’ve seen so far is that Mr. President’s approach is one that is commendable. For instance, during the last meeting, he also charged the National Security Adviser (NSA) to take it from there by making sure that all the different groups that did not want to see themselves – who, of course, before now, would not sit in the same table – they can now sit on the same table. Once that one is done and there is peace, oil exploration with commence. For the president to demonstrate to the world that he means inclusiveness, something good for the Ogoni people, less than a week ago, he signed into law, the establishment of a Federal University of Environment in Ogoniland, purely dedicated to the people of Ogoni in order to address environmental problems.”
Momoh said since the coming of the Tinubu government, there have been projects in Ogoniland including those abandoned in the past.
“And beyond that, under the HYPREP (Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project) hydrocarbon remedial agency, a number of projects are going on in the region which before the coming of this administration were almost at the lowest ebb,” the minister said.
The kingdom of Ogoniland in Rivers State, home to about a million people, became an emblem of the problem after years of oil and gas exploration and production by a joint venture with Shell.
After mass protests led by activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni Nine, Shell stopped production in 1993.
The Nigerian government pledged to restore the damage after a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) assessment of the area some years ago.
The UN said at the time that an initial cleanup would cost $1 billion and take five years. Cleanup activities finally started in January 2019.
However, the Federal Government is looking at resuming oil exploration in Ogoniland.
That has stirred debates but some youths in the area have backed the proposal.
