By Ibanga Isine, Port Harcourt
Published: Tuesday, 17 Jul 2007

The group also berated the Chairman of the Presidential Committee on the Reconciliation of Ogoni and the SPDC, Fr. Matthew Kuka, for misinforming the public that Ogoni people had reconciled with the oil firm.

In a statement by MOSOP’s Information Officer, Bariara Kpalap, which was made available to our correspondent in Port Harcourt on Monday, the group indicated that Kuka failed in addressing the major grouse of the Ogoni people.

The statement reads, “The truth is that Father Kuka has held the position of facilitator of the Ogoni-Shell Reconciliation initiative for over two years and we are worried that his claims of progress are now bordering on delusion.

“On several occasions, his efforts to publicly exaggerate his progress have bordered on causing a major crisis in Ogoni. For the record, MOSOP would welcome a balanced dialogue on the future of Ogoni but none of the manoeuvres of the past two years have resembled anything like a frank and open discussion, which we specifically sought two years back.”

MOSOP insisted that efforts to reconcile Ogoni with the SPDC were not new but that all of them had not yielded positive results due to insincerity on the part of the multinational oil firm.

It added that Kuka never kept to the terms of the reconciliation agenda, stating that while the Ogoni team was waiting for the agenda, the people were given SPDC’s clean-up plan without prior consultation.

It also accused the cleric of rejecting the people selected by Ogoni to represent them at the committee but instead picked those who did not have the backing of the people.

The body said that the Justice Chukwudifu Oputa’s panel was more transparent in dealing with the Ogoni/Shell crisis and could claim credit for reconciling the people and not the Kuka-led panel.

It further stated, “The facilitator has been exploiting his closeness with former President Olusegun Obasanjo to misrepresent the situation of a breakthrough in the Ogoni-Shell dialogue. That was the situation also last May when a Memorandum of Understanding between the Federal Government, Shell, UNEP and Ogoni people was to be signed.

“The MoU, the terms of which have never been shown to or discussed with the Ogoni people, and which has also been presented in certain quarters as a reconciliation agreement with Shell, was to be surreptitiously introduced through a so-called spiritual cleansing service in Ogoni.

“It was MOSOP’s insistence against the plot that earned it and its leadership the tirades that we have seen from the supposed neutral facilitator and ‘Man of God,” the statement stated.