By Donu Kogbara
LAST week, I wrote about the recent United Nations Environmental Programme, UNEP, report. It was based on a scientific study – the most detailed to ever be conducted in the Niger Delta region; and it accused Shell and the Nigerian government of failing to protect my Ogoni homeland from chronic pollution.

I mentioned the massive damage that has been inflicted on our waterways, ancestral lands and the air we breathe. I highlighted the fact that UNEP has said that Ogoniland requires the biggest oil clean-up in history and reckons that the process will take about three decades and cost at least $1 billion.

I quoted a foreign journalist who visited Ogoniland and pointed out, in an article a) that in one community, drinking water was contaminated with benzene, a carcinogen, at levels over 900 times above World Health Organisation guidelines and b) that in most of areas the UNEP team toured – areas that Shell claimed to have completely sanitised – high levels of pollution were still found.

I then complained about the fact that President Goodluck Jonathan did not see fit to include any Ogonis in the Special Committee that he has constituted to “undertake a holistic review of the UNEP report…and make recommendations to the Federal Government on immediate and long-term remedial actions”.

I also found fault with NNPC – which has been mandated to replace Shell in Ogoniland, via its subsidiary, the Nigerian Petroleum Development Corporation, NPDC, – for establishing in-house committees to investigate the Ogoni problem before it has reached out to the suffering people who own the problem.

And I didn’t restrict my legitimate complaints on behalf of my people to the pages of this newspaper. I also directly addressed them to some of the senior government officials I know; and I was shocked by the reactions I encountered.

The above officials either shrugged nonchalantly and expressed no interest in my concerns about the insensitive manner in which this matter is being handled…OR arrogantly informed me that Mr President and the Group Managing Director of NNPC are “entitled” to deal with the Ogoni problem in their own ways and without necessarily consulting Ogoni leaders from the outset.

Only two out of the 20 or so government officials I approached reacted sympathetically. And I’m not a habitual troublemaker or diehard radical who is always agitating for the sake of agitating and can never see any good in any government action. But I’m totally beginning to understand why some folks become totally embittered and totally determined to fight The System!

TRUE democracy barely exists in Africa. The Nigerian ruling class is notoriously undemocratic and accustomed to getting away with rubbish most of the time. But there are exceptions to every rule and complacency can be a HUGE mistake.

Because of People Power, Shell has not been able to engage in exploration and production activities in Ogoniland since l993. Because the Presidency is a uniquely privileged, pampered and protected institution, Jonathan sometimes languishes in a delusional Ivory Tower that is a million miles away from reality.

But NNPC is a more down-to-earth and exposed entity. It has access to raw, unedited information that may never reach Jonathan; and I strongly advise NNPC to smarten up and get off its high horse because it won’t be funny if NNPC winds up becoming as unpopular in Ogoniland as Shell was.

We dey watch-o!

Bombs and bombast

LAST Friday, a bombripped through the United Nations HQ in Abuja. Several people were killed or wounded. An expatriate friend tells me that many foreigners are terrified of Boko Haram’s boldness and are desperately fleeing from Nigeria because they now regard Nigeria as a security nightmare.

And I don’t doubt that Nigeria has become a security nightmare, but I am sick of listening to bombastic statements about Jonathan’s alleged culpability.

I don’t see why Jonathan should be blamed for the nightmare. I have criticised him quite a few times since the April elections because he has yet to fulfil his potential and has done or said quite a few things that have ticked me off big-time. Or NOT done or said things that I expected him to do or say.

But I feel obliged to vigorously defend him against the many critics who are currently trying to pin Boko Haram outrages on him.

How can Jonathan be held responsible for an Islamic group’s penchant for random violence, whether the group’s raison d’etre is a purely religious Jihad (Holy War) thing or a more complex issue of Northern youths expressing their fury about longstanding social neglect and political marginalisation?

Is it Jonathan’s fault if a bunch of extremists want to hold the entire country to ransom? Is it Jonathan’s fault that most Northern leaders have woefully and shamelessly failed those who looked up to them for progress?

Does Jonathan not have a Vice-President from the North? And what, exactly, by the way, is this Vice-President, Alhaji Namadi Sambo, achieving in terms of taming and enhancing his ethnic and geographical constituency?

When I lived in London, the Irish Republican Army, IRA, a terrorist group, was on the rampage. It planted bombs here, there and yonder. It attacked the revered London Stock Exchange Building. It even succeeded in assassinating or maiming members of the British Government and Royal Family.

Even the most sophisticated establishments in the Western World cannot, despite their genuine commitment to social justice and highly advanced military and intelligence capabilities, easily prevent clandestine guerrilla outfits from unleashing murder and mayhem on the societies they want to destroy.

Jonathan is our Commander-in-Chief and obviously has to do something drastic about this terrible status quo. But it really upsets me when he is depicted as the architect of a Northern crisis that he most certainly did NOT create.