BEYOND PARDON AND POSTHUMOUS HONOURS, ACTIVIST SEEKS CLOSURE TO VICTIMS OF OGONI STRUGGLE

The people of the Ogoni ethnic nationality in Rivers State are asking for more than just a presidential pardon and posthumous national honours for the slain Ogoni-Nine activists. President BOLA TINUBU had during his Democracy Day address at the National Assembly on Thursday last week, made the pronouncements in honour of playwright and environmental activist, KEN SARO-WIWA, and eight of his compatriots. SARO-WIWA and the eight others were executed by the miliary junta of late General SANI ABACHA in 1995, after they were tried and convicted by a military tribunal. A leading environmental rights activist from the Ogoni extraction, CELESTINE AKPOBARI, said President TINUBU should have instituted a panel of inquiry into the killings of the Ogoni-Nine to revert the justice done by the military. AKPOBARI said President TINUBU recognized that the killings were wrongfully done when he mentioned in his address that it should not have happened. Speaking further, CELESTINE AKPOBARI, said the families of Ogoni victims of injustice by the Nigerian state expect the government to apologise to them and compensate them, and for those who are complicit in the acts to face justice. On the efforts to clean-up Ogoni land of oil pollution, AKPOBARI, who is the National Coordinator of the Ogoni Solidarity Forum, said the exercise has been slow due to lack of adequate funding.