Ogoniland Oil Spillage Clean-Up: How President Muhammadu Buhari Got It Perfectly Right.

"The clean up exercise will begin at Ogoni in three weeks time and progress to other parts of the Niger Delta region. We have gone to visit the area to assess the level of damage and a lot of people from the region will be involved in the exercise",
were the words of Brig-General Paul Boroh (Rtd) (Special Assistant To The President) on March 24 in Enugu.

This is a commendable gesture from the president after the Ogoni people have suffered all manner of neglect even in the administration of the past one. The impact of this clean up programme can never be overstated as it will once again show how sensitive the present administration is to the needs of it's citizens.

For a better understanding of the programme, a background study of the degradable environmental state of Ogoniland is paramount. In 1956 after oil was discovered in Niger Delta with oil exploration commencing in 1958 and the country earning handsomely from it's sales. While the Nigerian revenue astronomically increased as a result of the oil sales, Ogoniland witnessed not less than 2,976 oil spills which represented 2.1 million barrels of oil , accounting for a total of 40 percent of the Royal Dutch/Shell company worldwide total oil spills from 1976-1991. Ogoniland is located on the coast of the Gulf of Guinea and east of Port Hacourt City of Rivers State with a population of about 1.5 million people and living in a 404-square-mile.

The Ogoniland has been so much polluted that the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), revealed that the alluvial soil of Ogoniland and Niger Delta were no longer viable for agriculture and that such lands were contaminated 900 levels above World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines with high concentrates of hydrocarbons and benzene as a result of oil flaring, oil spills and waste discharge since the advent of oil exploration in Nigeria.

This was also the sole objective of the Movement of the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) led by renowned writer Ken Saro Wiwa in 1990, with a motive to preserve Ogoniland 's natural resources from the increasing land degradation. As history has it, Ken Saro Wiwa and  several other MOSOP leaders were rounded , unfairly tried and executed in 1994 by the General Sani Abacha led Nigerian government.

It has also been reported by the UNEP that it could take up to 30 years to clean up the mess left by the oil spillage while US$1 billion will be needed to fund it's first five years of rehabilitation .

It is good to note that, while the whole country and entire  regions enjoyed the revenue and riches from oil exploitation  and sales, the Niger Delta people have been left deprived and alienated from the society, suffering from the baggages of oil spillage for long decades. These inhabitants of the polluted land can no longer farm nor fish as a result of the degradation that their environment have suffered. The irony of it all,  is that no past government has paid attention to their plights including the previous one , which was headed by a Niger Deltan himself (Dr. Goodluck Jonathan), while the present administration  at a time of fall in crude oil sales has promised to make in-roads in the clean-up process.

If it actually succeeds in this hurricane task it has promised to undertake in the next few days, then the government of President Muhammadu Buhari even in it's first few months in office might go down in history as the best to the Niger Delta inhabitants.

As they say, action speaks louder than voice , yet all the same, credit must be given to the present administration  for conceiving such "Great" thoughts.