There are about 250 different ethnic groupings speaking about five hundred different languages and dialects in the present day Nigeria. These peoples at no time in history agreed to become one. The country – Nigeria, is purely the making of accidental circumstances, intrusions and invasions by external forces and factors. Before these forces and factors made their incursions into the system, these peoples, as available record shows, were peoples of the Neolithic age. There is therefore no clear trace of what happened before the post-stone age or the Neolithic age amongst these peoples. The peoples that make up Nigeria can individually trace their different steps backward to a time when the many peoples existed as separate entities. They all had their own autonomous states and indigenous nations without any interference, the individual ethnic groups related with who seems to have some common heritage and interests with them, forming a practical confederation when and where necessary.

By the 11^th century, the present day Northern Nigeria for instance, had seven independent Hausa city-states, namely, Biram, Daura, Gobir, Kano, Kastina, Rano and Zazzua (now known and called Zaria). There was however some forms of fighting to conquer and capture less powerful states amongst the Hausa city-states. The fighting was basically between empires of Kano and Kastina. These fighting for dominance brought out heroes and empires like Kanem – Bornu and Songhai. In the present Nigerian Southwest, there were two empires, namely, Oyo and Benin states, which were already conspicuous by the 14^th century. A Dutch visitor to Benin City wrote around 1600, that, "as you enter it, the town appears very great. You go into a great broad street, not paved, which seems to be seven or eight times broader than the Warmoes Street in Amsterdam…The houses in the town stand in good order, one close and even with the other, as the houses in Holland stand.."

The Benin kingdom for instance, became a very prominent kingdom that dominated as far as the present day Benin Republic (formerly called Dahomey Republic). The Oyo Empire took control of the whole of Yorubaland, which is the totality of the present Southwestern Nigerian.

While the Igbo people or the present Southeastern Nigeria lived as a decentralized people in various villages, towns and communities that depended on a system of parliamentary leadership that is built on the representatives and leadership of various families.

In the Niger Delta or the South – South Nigeria, were the Ogoni people are only one out of the many tribes that make up the region, there were two notable kingdoms, namely, Calabar dynasty and the Bonny kingdom besides other smaller kingdoms. In the Niger Delta, the peoples interrelated while they maintained their different boundaries. They had common heritage like fishing and farming that kept them together, though the quest for ownership of fishing and farming territories caused sporadic inter communal clashes, there is hardly any evidence of any out right conquering of one by another. It was also common place for the tribes in the Niger Delta to break away to form other kingdoms because of leadership tussles. Like the Opobo people breaking away from the Bonny kingdom, the Okirika people breaking away from the Kalabari kingdom and the Andonis breaking away from the Okirika people. It is also important to note that this unique antecedence of the Niger Delta peoples has a great influence over the region, which is the treasure base of Nigeria not being able to form a common front in their demands. This is so, as the oil barons and political powers do always combined to instigate one tribe against the other.

There is one external factor that operated in two different folds and eras, though they lapsed into each other. These are slave trade and collaborative colonialism.

i. Slave trade: The Trans Atlantic and Trans Saharan trade of Africans blossomed amongst the peoples that make up the present day Nigeria than almost all other parts of Africa because of the already existing terra – cottas. The Portuguese who first came for the business of slavery got a ready collaboration in the existing ruling structures of these peoples who were willing to sale their subjects or people captured from neighboring communities. The Portuguese Duatre Pacheco Pereire wrote in the early sixteen century after a visit to Benin Kingdom that the kingdom "is usually at war with its neighbors and takes many captives, whom we buy at twelve or fifteen brass bracelets each, or for copper bracelets, which they prize more."

By the introduction of slave trade to these kingdoms and peoples, several parts, especially the majority parts of the present Nigeria took delight in the sales of their fellow brothers to the whites. The leaders saw it as a chief means of enriching themselves, thereby making the leaders the richest people in the lands through the wicked act of slave trade. It was so bad that the African dealers in slavery never wanted it to stop even when the white people were already tired and willing to stop. The business started in 1441 with the sales of ten persons first to Portuguese seamen at the Portuguese Sea port of Lagos. It was officially abolished in 1807 but it went on illegally and in high scale too, up till 1893. Meaning that a total of 452 years was spent by the various kingdoms and rulers in trading and making fortunes from the weak and powerless people of the society. The mind of oppression was so strong in the leaders as a means of making gain such that even after the official pronouncement of the end of slavery. The leaders of the pre-colonial Nigerian states still manage to keep the trade going between them and their foreign partners till about 1893. Slavery only ended in practice in Nigeria when the leaders got an assurance from the whites that the aristocrat and feudal structures would be maintained.

English missionary and slave trade abolitionist Thomas Buxton wrote in 1840 (that is 33 years after they have tried to stop the trade). That the best way to suppress the slave trade was to offer Africa's slaving elites legitimate business that would give them means to satisfy their hunger for western goods. "The African has acquired a taste for the civilized world. They have become essentials to his. To say that the African, under present circumstances, shall not deal in man, is to say he shall long in vain for his accustomed gratification."

ii. Colonialism and the existing structures:

The colonization of the Nigerian peoples was borne out of pure business desire by the western world. Between the time that slavery ended and when colonialism started, the western world and the various Nigerian kingdoms still did business together. There was no real gap or difference between the business of slave trade and the later trade on African raw produce.

Colonialism eventually came into the business relationship as a way of solidifying a mutual relationship between the indigenous leaders and the western business concern. The whites knew that without the collaboration of the ethnical or tribal leaders, they couldn't conquer Nigeria. Because, before the period of the commencement of the process of colonialism; the leaders of the various peoples that make up Nigeria today, has managed to secure for themselves a position that the British colonial lords must recognize. Apart from the fact that the African leaders cooperated because of their own greed, they also had to submit to the superior forces of the whites. The capture and death of King Jaja of Opobo was as a result of his resistance of the whites doing business in his domain with due respect to his throne and agreement.

Even at the face of such collaborative colonialism and forceful annexations of people and inclusion into a British made project, the present day Nigeria was not conquered as one entity. The British forces first took over the Sokoto Empire in 1903, which had by this time dominated the whole of the pre-colonial northern states, and by 1906 Britain had other parts of Nigeria. Nigeria was first captured in parts, that is, the Northern Protectorate, the Southern Protectorate and the Lagos Colony and ruled separately between 1903 until 1914. When Sir Lord Fredrick Luggard amalgamated these protectorates to become Nigeria.

The colonial masters ruled Nigeria through a system known as the indirect rule. What this means is that the traditional kingdoms and their leaders "co–colonized". By this, it means that the structures which depended on slavery for its benefits has to change into accepted feudalism in the name of colonialism.

The nationalist movements started in 1922 and it was spear headed by late Herbert Marculay and late Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe. But the nationalist struggle was actually a battle between the educated elites and the uneducated but powerful traditional stools or feudal lords. The educated elites sort to take the mantle of leadership on the basis of their education from the traditional institutions through the whites, using their newly acquired education as advantages. This gave raise to another round of negotiations and compromise in and amongst the high echelon of the Nigerian peoples. The compromise this time was between the leaders of the different tribes and ethnic groups. And it basically has to do with how their descendants and cohorts will keep modern power. This is the foundation of the Nigerian nation state power still revolving around the grand and great grand children of those who were slave trade merchants who has turned over time into modern political lords. They started their relationship with their white friends from the time past and operated the government with them to the detriment of the locals.

Under the indirect rule system, a Governor-General governed the country, the different colonial constitutions then, provided for the principle of direct election into a Legislative Council. This Legislative Council was a perfunctionary structure that played no significant role. The struggle of the nationalists therefore centered around negotiations and lobby for the structures to be empowered and made to function, against a mere "rubber stamp" status. Nigeria therefore, never experienced any real struggle against foreign domination like the way the people of South Africa and other Southern African nations did.

Between 1922 to 1951, the Nigerian nation state witnessed several forms of innovations in this structuring to accommodate the demands of the nationalists and elevations of the leaders towards assumption of power and the leadership of the country. In this vein, the Nigerian nationalists functioned more as black politicians who desired to have full modern power to control their peoples. They only sort to dislodge the British from having direct control over the lands and the resources (as earlier shown that the British Empire captured the Nigerian protectorates and territories for business purposes. And they were doing business in the trade of raw produce with the country immediately after the slave trade). They needed these powerful traditional stools for them to be able to get raw materials like peanuts, cocoa, palm produce etc.

The whites therefore, in the name of colonialism consolidated the position of the indigenous stools that joined the foreign "businessmen" or colonial lords from Britain to subject the different ethnic and indigenous peoples. What happened in Nigeria therefore, was a matter of fashioning means of sustaining the British business interests and creation of political cum economic appendages through the governing structure. Several companies later came out of these illicit bilateral relationships, and some these companies have over the period become nationalized but not completely indigenous. And Shell British Petroleum is one out of the many companies that came with the colonial masters, the company has changed to Shell Petroleum Development Company Limited of Nigeria, following the nationalization that followed a political face off in 1975 between Nigeria and Britain over Angola. But like many other British businesses concerns in the country, she still has great and undivorced allegiance and loyalty to the Mother Company.

The nationalists therefore united against the white man but maintained their separatist, balkanized and regional political enclave that was not far from their personal economic interests. These informed for the political movements to be formed along major tribal lines; the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroon (NCNC) controlled the eastern region, this organization was later known as the National Convention of Nigerian Citizens. Northern Peoples Congress (NPC) controlled the northern region. Action Group, a political party that metamorphosed from a cultural group of the Yorubas controlled the western region. All these organizations doubled as political movements agitating for the nationalism of the Nigerian nation state and political parties at the same time. They contested elections and won mainly in their individual domains and spoke as one voice when it has to do with the white man.

To prove that the various regions were not united and never had any common nationalistic identity and destiny, the eastern and western regions jointly moved for a motion for self-rule. Anthony Enahoro, who was only twenty years then, moved the motion, which the Northern Peoples Congress (NPC) representing the northern region agitated against, this resulted in the first and only time that the modern Nigeria operated as a truly federal state. As the western and eastern regions attained self-rule status while the British were able to convince the northern region to become part of the negotiation for an independent Nigeria later on. The Nigerian nation state, run as a practical confederation between 1953 to 1963, allowing the separate parts to develop at individual pace and political dictum.

On October 1^st 1960, the Nigerian people got their flag independence with the National Convention of the Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) and the Northern Peoples Congress (NPC) forming a coalition government. The leader of NCNC, Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe, a better-educated person was given the position of the Governor General, a position that made him a ceremonial head of the country. While his colleague, the leader of the NPC, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was the Prime Minister with more powers and loyalty to the whites.

Distrust, dissentions, internal bickering and corruption characterized the first Nigerian indigenous government. The politicians discovered even before the last white man vacated the office that they were not meant to and couldn't work together because of the divergent views and great loyalty to their different ethnic agenda. The country became a Republic in 1963 as the British union jack was lowered and the Nigerian flag hoisted. The crisis persisted and assumed a conspicuous dimension as the various ethnical parties tried to manipulate the system therefrom.

This led to the first military intervention in 1966, the military boys came into power with the postulation that they wish to sanitize the system and purge away the corrupt politicians. It was a bloody coup that took the lives of so many prominent politicians, including the Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. The people of the north saw the coup as an anti north putsch and therefore staged a counter coup that took the live of the first military head of state, Major General Ajuyi Ironsi. The military eventually became cracked along regional line and there was no national loyalty in the army. The crisis deepens as the northern people killed thousands of the Igbos (the predominant group of the then eastern Nigeria). Lt. Col. Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, declared war after means of settlement between the federal government and the eastern government could not work.

The Nigerian nation has since then remain a heavily militarily controlled nation as it became part of the military ideology to always take over the government when they feel like. The country has therefore spent the largest number of its sovereignty under military misrulership, only recently did the military rank and file tried to strike an agreement with the partisan politicians. Hence, what is obtained in Nigeria today and may continue to be, is a democratic government that must have the blessing of the military through the involvement of retired but influential military personnels in offices, especially the presidency or the vice at the least. So that even when Nigeria lay claim to a democracy, it is militarily baked and staged managed like the government of Olusegun Obasanjo.

There are several negative effects that the war left in the Nigerian body politics till today but in the context of the issue being pursued. I would have to consider only two, which are,

(1) The creation of states and (2) the interweaving of oil to the central power.

The two sides tried to annex as much resource viable areas in Nigeria for them to win the war, for which the issue of Bakassi peninsula between Nigeria and the Cameroon is still boiling. The federal government created 12 states in all, abolishing the regions, the minorities deserted the Biafran side as Rivers State was created as one of the twelve states. And this marked the beginning of state creation, which has remained the exclusive practice of the military and their myth. The states were not created for the sake of the Ogoni people and the minorities; it was a mechanism aimed at having them controlled by the federal government that is dominated by the big tribes. It was created to discourage the oil producing peoples from thinking of seceding with their oil like the Biafrans who were pursuing for secession. Thus, the many Nigerian states (or Provinces) of today are not in the interest of the peoples political will or able to solve the problems of the structural in-balances. As Tell Magazine Page 31, April 9 2001, states that, "what Gowon did as an exigency of the war later became permanent. Having tempered with the resource control element in the 1969 and found it a cheap source of money to fill the federal government coffers, subsequent governments after Gowon’s decided to hold on to it, there by denying the needed funds for the grassroots development."

The Ogoni people went into the war era as a confused people without a political identity and agenda for themselves; yet, they came out to face a most confused post war politics. That neither integrates them into a viable nation nor restores them to their original status that was stolen by the British in 1908. The war clarified the fact that every government in Nigeria (operating around the Ogoni people) is only interested in the oil in Ogoniland. The post war politics did not help the Ogoni situation because it disarmed the Ogoni people from fighting a cause for themselves. The Ogoni people have therefore wasted over three decades waiting in vain for a "dream Nigeria" that would never be. They therefore decided to take their political destiny in their own hands, fighting for what the false political marriage could not give to the Ogoni people.

The Ogoni people were an indigenous and distinct ethnic group like any other group before 1908. They were never conquered or colonized during or before the slave trade by any other group. But the British colonization forced the Ogoni people into the Opobo administrative division from 1908 to 1947. The Ogoni people protested against the forced union until the Ogoni Native Authority was created in 1947 and placed in then Rivers Province.

In 1951, the Ogoni people along with other minority groups were forced into the then Eastern Region, were the Ogoni people were relegated to an insignificant minority group. The Ogoni people again seized the opportunity of the election of 1957 to protest their placement in the Eastern Nigeria because of obvious fear of intimidation and maltreatment from the majority and advantageous tribes in the region. The protest of the Ogoni people also allowed them as an individual group to appear before the Willink Commission of Inquiry into Minority Fears of 1958. In 1967, when the military created states to amputate the Biafran side, we the Ogoni people were placed in Rivers State along side other ethnic groups. The Ogoni people are still part of a state structure of many other groupings, occupying a total of 400 square miles that is divided into five local government areas (or municipalities) that are mainly rural. It is interesting to note that many places that were not up to native authority status as when the Ogoni people became one, had since became state or states created through the military political myths of those from such areas.

The implication of this is that, the Ogoni is an ethnic group within a nation cannot decide their own political and economical destiny outside what the people that inherited power from the white men think and believes about the Ogoni people. It means that the Ogoni people are at the mercy of a political cult that basically dominate the country through their forefathers' negotiations for power to keep the peoples of Nigeria as a "slave" colony. And the Ogoni people who manage to come in contact with the white man in 1908 does not in any way have any input into whatever political and economic game-play that the surrogates and custodians of the white people and the "Nigerian dynasty" have in mind from 1840. When they offered to use the Nigerian indigenous leaders to consolidate power upon the people and continually ripe from the rich natural endowment of these peoples.

The argument of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni people are that; firstly, the Nigerian body politics and administration, irrespective of who or what type of government (military or civil) in power should acknowledge that the Nigerian peoples were all different peoples that were forced together against their wishes. That there was no time that the Nigerian peoples agreed to become one nation. And the forced nationhood of Nigeria has proven to be ineffective and inefficacious in addressing the fundamental human rights and needs of the millions of indigenous peoples.

Secondly, the peoples and tribes that negotiated the independence of Nigeria had severally betrayed the tenets of true federalism, which is the only system of governance that befits a multi ethnic nation like Nigeria. The Ogoni people believes in the ethnicity and nationalities of each individual peoples irrespective of sizes and there should be no regard or undue advantages for some other tribes that sees themselves as having the prerogatives of state instruments and apparatus.

The Ogoni people has observed and has enough reasons to justify that the nation of Nigeria is only a bourgeois agenda being orchestrated for the purpose of enriching a few, through kleptocratic modalities that masquerades as governance. That systemic and endemic corruption flourishes under the armpit and within the ambit of ethnic chauvinism and super imposition of the hegemony of the bigger tribes upon the weak and small groups. This is done through the bigger tribes and their allies monopolizing military and political positions to usurp the control of natural resources. Creating unviable states that depends on revenue that comes from the sales of oil tapped from the soil of the weak and small groups. By so doing, the Ogoni people in five local government areas produces oil that the seventeen northern states cannot produce, yet, these bigger groups have the automatic power to decide how the oil wealth would be shared.

The Ogoni people seek to know why should millions of Nigerians wallows in penury, and most especially, why should a federal state be operated in a unitary manner when the pre-colonial era was not. The pseudo federalism of Nigeria gives the central authority excessive powers that is normally misused by those in authority. The nation state simply uses the too much power vested in their hands to steal what belongs to the indigenous peoples. The Ogoni people are saying that all individual ethnic components of the Nigerian nation state should be autonomous as they were before the foreign intrusions, which led to the introduction of the present Nigerian accepted imperialism and neo-colonialism.

While on the contrary, the stakeholders of power that doubles, as the Nigerian oil-economic individual interests know that the reverse of the present Nigerian quagmire and a paradox of autarky will imply an economic revolution. Where the local and indigenous peoples that are the have-nots would be empowered as the culture of oligarchy, opulence and super wealthy would be drastically reduced. The Nigerian ruling class have constituted themselves into a power cult that consolidate their illicit positions through their seating on the oil wells of the indigenous peoples. Making every position in the Nigerian socio-political fabric an automatic looting ticket, hence, they are not willing to let such a revolution to take place for fear of loosing their relevance.

Ken Saro Wiwa started out by mobilizing his own people for them to be able to decide their own destiny, but the Ogoni struggle eventually triggered a lot of desires for true independence against man oppress man under the cover of a nation state that does not actually exist. Ogoni is therefore a catalyst for the freedom of the over 130 million people that are suffering various forms of gross violation of their human dignity and rights and amputation through impoverishment in the midst of plenty. The Nigerian power holders are currently busy with the odious jobs of trying to make sure that the situation does not slip out of their hands. As they put up a lot of show case and window dressed platforms and structures that should create an illusionary impression of moving from a dark era to into an era of progress.

And in all that, the people that take the blame and scourge from the power holders are the Ogoni people, for raising the curtain for the world to come face to face with the Nigerian dirtiness. While others are pacified, the Ogoni people and tamed both at home and even on exile in Ouidah, Benin Republic.

The agitation of the oil producing communities in general and the Ogoni people in particular has not received any substantial attention from the Nigerian government. The Niger Delta communities were under the impression that Olusegun Obasanjo's primary concern as a "plain-clothes" head of state, would be to repeal the "Land Use Decree and Petroleum Act Law". Both Laws were promulgated in 1978 by the same head of state when he was the military head of Nigeria.

The two laws decreed that; all land within the Nigerian geographical entity belonged to the central government, which implies that, the peoples who had occupied their lands for ages before the formation of Nigeria had become tenants in their own land. Secondly, that all natural resources that are found in the soil below six feet deep belong to the central government. This means that if a man struck water in the borehole of his compound after six feet, the water belongs to the federal government. What a funny law?

Subsequent administrations after Obasanjo's military era capitalized on these laws to wreck havoc upon the poor and weak people of the Niger Delta. The laws became official apparatus for dispossessing the Ogoni people and other minorities of their crude oil. Every administration had always exonerated itself from the constitutional robbery of Obasanjo's military era. It was therefore a momentary relief for the Niger Delta, when Obasanjo was brought back as head of state. They presumed that Obasanjo would untie the cord that kept the minorities bound via these two laws. Several groups thus raised dust in the face of the Nigeria government since 1999 as a reminder to the President. But the government under Obasanjo proved both adamant and aggressively repulsive to all organized non-violent protest. The Nigerian government ensured that brutal force was not only used in quenching movements in the Niger Delta but also clandestine and subtle incursions were made into the rank and file of the Niger Delta activism.

Communities, cult groups, political jobbers, touts and thugs are armed heavily to unleash terror upon environmental rights crusaders. The government as a way of setting the people against each other and breaking down any united fronts, creates wars and clashes where none supposed to exist. The government also makes sure that their own agents and people that would be manipulated at the will of the government are imposed upon the people as their political representatives and as student union leaders in the Niger Delta. All these has resulted in paralyzing effective forums and platforms that should have placed pressure on the government. Many of the people who currently speak as leaders of the Niger Delta people are merely "acting opposition" by mimicking environmental rights crusades and Pan Niger Deltalists. Such people mainly end up stuffing their pockets with good money and keep the drama series running to the deception of the masses.

The Olusegun Obasanjo government also created the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC). The commission is no different from the Oil Mineral Producing Area Development Commission (OMPADEC) and the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF). These boards or commissions proved to be cooling mechanisms as they awarded questionable contracts for social amenities projects to "government boys" from all over the country. NDDC merely dusted the files and furniture of the earlier boards. It followed the legacy of the two other boards and the "Nigerian factors" that has remain very integral in whole structures of the Nigerian nation.

The ZNET magazine of the 10 August 2003 wrote of the NDDC thus: "only recently has the government made efforts to improve people's lives, albeit it's more of a public relations excise than anything else. In December 2001, a Niger Delta Development Commission was set up to diffuse the feelings that the Niger Delta's oil wealth does not benefit the region. It's reported that over 4-billion naira (2. million dollars) building schools, health centers and bringing electricity and piped water to communities across the region. However, the people are proving these reports false." What this situation translates into, is that government contractors, who are political "god fathers" and or associates that sponsored or supported the candidatures of political office holders. In their desire to make profit on their "investments", use the government armed forces to quell protest against their kleptocracy in case communities does not like the manner of the project being executed.

Communities that mobilize themselves to protest against such naked cheating in the name of provision of social amenities are suppressed by military myth. Project such as provision of public bore holes, empty maternity centers and class rooms, etc, which are not the priorities amongst the demands of the oil producing communities are forced upon the people and trumpeted in the media. This is why communities always mobilized themselves against such supplementary schemes. While the contractors would always fall back to the government for forces to subdue the agitating groups. Group leaders would be arrested and judged by the government paid law officers. In some cases, group leaders are libeled in other to justify incarcerations and brutal tortures.

The government of Olusegun Obasanjo recently tried to save the face of his ill-fated democracy by calling for a National Constitutional Reformation Conference. The conference failed as predicted by many Nigerian progressives, yet, the government has scored itself and the conference astronomically high as a "huge success." Even without the issue of the Niger Delta demands being addressed. The conference like the Oputa Panel was not well intentioned but it exposed the callousness and slave status in which some segment of the country takes the Ogoni people and other Niger Delta tribes. There is no gain saying that the northern power brokers shamelessly demonstrated their desire to keep the oil-producing zone of Nigeria as a colony of a colonial appendage by throwing the most fairest demands of the Niger Delta communities through the windows of the conference without any feelings or remorse. The Niger Delta people requested for a mere beggarly 50% of the proceeds that accrues from the mining of oil for the development of their land and peoples. But the northern delegates refused and after very heated encounter, the conference decided to give the Niger Delta an infinitesimal 17% against the Niger Delta 25% as a minimum bar that should be improved upon within a space of five years.

This scenario leaves for us a lot of issues, it openly demonstrates that the country in the hand of a section of the country, and that is the north and their allies. It has shown that the weak and small groups of Nigeria do not have a stake in their destiny if the whole of the oil region cannot get what they want from such national debate. It therefore goes with saying that the matter of the Ogoni people or any other minority groups that are as backward as the Ogoni people deserve immediate and urgent international rescue mission. And that is what the Ogoni Solidarity Forum is advocating, because, the trend of events in Nigeria has shown that the man imposed destiny for the Ogoni people is none other a constant ebbing till it crashed into the dish that would mark a catastrophic end.

The other big question is that, if the conference has had granted the 50 or 25% as it was later proposed, would have in anyway addressed the demands of the Ogoni people and the problems in the Niger Delta. NO! It would not have done anything for the Ogoni people particularly.

First, the Nigerian government and Shell Petroleum Development Company has over the past twelve years done a lot of destruction in Ogoniland and that also goes for other places like the people of Odi in Bayesa. The people of Oloibiri for instance, cannot use their land any more because of oil activities that have already ended in that land. Majority of Nigerians does not know again that oil was first struck in commercial quantity in Oloibiri in 1958. It is such a pain that the name of this village does not even reflects in Nigerian primary school or high school history books let alone the higher institutions. For these kinds of situations, how do you use the 25% that never came to solve their problems when that is going to come from future oil drilling whereas the disaster of the past still looms. How do you address the fact that the Odi people are still homeless and the 25% that did not come, if it had come would end up in the pockets of some great politicians and contractors while the local people wallow in abject poverty and leaking their wounds. How would have the 25% demand been able to do an environmental impact audit for the Ogoni people, how would have it been able to appease the family of the Ogoni people that were killed at various waterfronts in Port Harcourt.

Experience in recent past has shown that when Nigeria has constitutional conference like the one that has just come and gone without any achievement, yet, great deal of taxpayer money spent. The delegates always emerge as the new office bearers in the next political dispensation. Conferences like this has remain a traditional thing in Nigerian political circle for the "new breed" and off the track politcians to squeeze their ways into the main block of the Nigerian political power brokers. There is no exception to the Obasanjo's conference and the walk out by the Niger Delta delegates should not be celebrated as any new dawn by the common people of the region in general and the Ogoni people particularly. The conference organizers knew before hand that the matter of the Niger Delta would end the way it did. What the government has just achieved is that the masses of the Niger Delta would be made slumber once more, hallucinating that their leaders are going to get them a fair deal. But by the time they wake up, the government and the delegates would have discover a meeting point and what would happen at that point of their meeting is no longer what the Nigerian Television Authority would beam live for the public to see.

The government on the 1^st of June 2005 set up a peace and reconciliation committee, known as the Mathew Kukah's Peace and Reconciliation Committee. It is important to state unequivocally, that the committee would not succeed, it would fail and even cause more anarchy at the end of the day, which is one of the deliberate schemes to make Shell re-enter Ogoniland under the cover of a military peace operation in the land. The Ogoni Solidarity Forum do have a lot of doubt in this Peace and Reconciliation Committee, we have however made a submission to the International Centre for Reconciliation, ICR, which is anchoring the whole process. Our submission is not based on the committee of the Obasanjo government, it is based on the fact that the ICR is well respected Christian NGO and to us, it is a platform for furthering our advocacy.

Let it be recalled that the Ogoni people on the 4^th of January 1993, declared Shell Petroleum Development Company, a person-non-grata. Shell left Ogoniland against their will due to the pressure of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) under the leadership of the late Ken Saro Wiwa. It took a total of three hundred thousand Ogoni people in a mass rally to declare Shell and by implication their federal government partner as a person-non-grata. Today, the Ogoni people are more aggrieved than twelve years ago when they asked Shell out of their land. They are aggrieved against Shell and the federal government over the killing of their leaders and paying deaf ears to the just demand of the Ogoni people.

The peace committee is therefore set up to see primarily to the return of Shell and resumption of business as it was before 1993. The committee is not the first that has been set up by the government of Obasanjo, the only slight change in this committee is that, it is being anchored by the International Centre for Reconciliation (ICR) that is based in the United Kingdom, the home of Shell. It has the involvement of a Canon Justin Welby, at the international level and Reverend Father Mathew Kukah, a catholic priest that has been at the corridor of Nigerian power for the past fifteen years now or more.

Kukah, who is heading the committee at the home front, was the Secretary of the Human Rights Violation Investigation Commission or Oputa Panel that was set up by Obasanjo. That commission, after several months of seating to consider 10,000 petitions, out of which, 8,000 came from Ogoniland, the commission did nothing. The recommendations of the panel and the promise of Obasanjo have not been implemented. Whereas, the government decided to re-enter into Ogoniland to resume oil operations in April – May 2005, the attempt was resisted by some hundreds of Ogoni youths and it is against this resistance that the federal government decided to set up the latest commission.

The committee would not succeed because, the Ogoni people are more aggrieved now than when they first asked Shell to leave the land in 1993. Secondly, The Ogoni people sees the expulsion of the oil company and the federal government not doing business as they use to do as the only means left for them to humble the government to listen to them. The Ogoni people fears that without them holding fast to the rejection of the resumption of oil exploration activities that their agitation would be treated with alter levity, disregard, politicking and sheer disdain. They also feel that the only way to be compensated for the death of their leaders and loved ones, losses and damages that has been done is to stick to their gun, by refusing the federal government any chance to resume oil business.

The Mathew Kukah's committee would also fail because they are focussed on how Shell would come back into Ogoniland primarily, while they ignore the fact that the Ogoni people's demand did not originally involve the ousting of Shell from the land. The expulsion of Shell came only as a result of the federal government refusing to listen and attend to the demands of the Ogoni people as stated in the Ogoni Bill of Rights.

And from all indications, they the federal government and Shell are not willing to talk about the demands of the Ogoni Bill of Rights, (OBR). They want to address the people from the point that the government of Abacha is no more, while skipping the fact that the Ogoni people raise a broader question mark over the composition of Nigeria, the economic and empowerment factors as in oil and by extension other natural resources. The Ogoni case seek to know also what has happened so far, as she wants an account rendered for 900 million barrels of crude oil taken from her land and by extension, oil gain from other lands. She also seek to know why Shell and the federal authority are not willing to respect the precepts of Nigerian laws (1960 and 1963 constitutions) and the international standard of oil operations as in environmental matters and laws. The questions asked by the Ogoni people are very broad and the Nigerian State continually runs away from these naked facts of her flagrant irresponsibility.

On behalf of the Ogoni people that are on exile and thousands of my comrades that are operating underground in Ogoniland due to insecurity. l plead with your respective organizations to raise up and assist us to develop a constructive and pragmatic structure for the campaign of the plights of Ogoniland, the inhuman conditions that hundreds of us are being held in Benin Republic and other West African nations.

We plead that you motivate an urgent international and impartial team to go and see what is happening to my comrades in Benin Republic, investigate the activities of the present Nigerian government and its responses to the Ogoni people and their demands since 1999. When the quasi, pseudo, military baked, staged managed and Obasanjo window dressed and gallery democracy came into being. Above all, join hands with us to make the Nigerian bourgeois economic and governance structure to respond positively to the clarion calls of the indigenous peoples of the Niger Delta as a whole and Ogoniland in particular.

Thank You

Viva all organizations present

Viva the South African civil society organizations

Viva South African Comrades

Viva Ogoni Solidarity Forum

Viva Ogoniland