19TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE HANGING - NOVEMBER 10, 2014 AT KSW PEACE & FREEDOM CENTRE, BORI: ALL PROTOCOLS My sincere appreciation to the organizers of today’s event. Is another November 10 and as usual we are gathered to perform the ritual – dance to the drumbeats and make speeches. You can be sure that all over world, wherever a handful of Ogoni people may be, are similar gatherings. But the big question we must ask ourselves is, what effect has this gathering had on our people since 1996? On this same day last year we met here and asked ourselves these three questions: 1) Why was it joy for them to die? 2) How has the struggle fared since 1995? 3) What shall the scorecard be after November 10, 2013? In case you forgot, we also promised that, from November 10, 2013, we shall not continue to take a step forward and three steps backward. I remember asking us to be weary of voting in an election that will produce selfish, self-centered, parochial interests; all in the name of Ogoni man/woman in position. In assessing the scorecard of the struggle, between 2013 and 2014, we can boldly claim that we have made tremendous progress. The train of Ogoni Self Government has gone round virtually all the villages of Ogoni, re-awakening everyone to the fact that the only hope of the Ogoni man, woman and child is the Reason Ken and his compatriots accepted to die by hanging. You would agree with me that such campaign has hitherto been denied the people in the villages. Today Ogoni has evolved four Indigenous Political Parties, expected to produce credible, democratic and selfless Ogoni men, women and youths to steer the ship to shore. Every one of us is expected to help build these parties to an enviable height, similar to the parties you wish to clinch to. Good news is that the future of an Ogoni Political Party is brighter than APC, PDP, APGA, L.P, etc. because those parties are controlled or owned by individuals, while an Ogoni party is Ogoni in nature and the benefits spill over to entire Ogoni. I agree that building is the most difficult thing to do; but we must build. The ideology behind the parties is noble and in tandem with paragraph 20 (c) of Ogoni Bill of Rights (OBR). It is so regrettable to hear how every Ogoni person claims to support OBR and yet deny the spirit thereof. Politics is at the corner and almost everyone is itching to belong to one political party of the other, without asking ourselves what future those parties have for us. It might interest us to understand that everyone elected on the platform of the Nigerian political parties owes allegiance to owners of the parties. That is the good thing about having an Ogoni party, to which every person elected from the party will be responsible to the party and can be disciplined or corrected by the party according to our norms and traditional values. Therefore, as we step into this new phase of our political development, we call upon every eligible person to embrace the MOSOP phenomenon and align with Ogoni Governing herself in this 21st century. Enough of being slaves to other tribes, when we have got the wherewithal and even more, to be self-reliant and develop faster than our slave master would dictate for us. I like us to consider a situation where the head (governor) of the Province (formerly Kingdom) controls the resources and wealth accruing to and from the Province and uses same to develop the people and the area under his jurisdiction; instead of waiting for an allocation from the Federal to the State, which ends in people’s bank accounts. Thus depriving us education, health, housing, other facilities which ordinarily should be our birthrights. Good news is that Ogoni has come of age, under OCIA/MOSOP. (1). We now have the right to be Self-governed in Nigeria. (2). We can now choose who represent Ogoni, as of right in all Nigeria National (Federal) Institutions. (3). It is apparent that the only hope of Survival of Ogoni People in present day Nigeria is to clinch onto the UNs’ Declaration of Rights to Self-Determination and directives of UN General Assembly and its Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. We also have the choice to mortgage our future to PDP and APC and remain slaves for a very long time, because of IMMEDIATE GAINS. Thank you. JOHN LAR-WISA Administrator. OGEPA
Posted on: Tue, 11 Nov 2014 16:18:51 +0000
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