Below is a press release issued by the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP):

As Ogonis prepare to mark the anniversary of some of their heroes who were executed on 10th of November 1995, The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) has alerted of a recent plot to cause further crisis in Ogoni. At a time when Ogoni has been an oasis of peace and peaceful resistance in the Niger delta, it would have been expected that those saddled with the sacred responsibility for law and order and reconciliation would have done everything to consolidate peace instead of precipitating crises.

MOSOP is acutely worried that the already dead so-called Rev.Fr Matthew Kukah facilitated reconciliation process which has failed even in the very basic criteria of facilitating one single meeting between the parties should facilitate a so-called stakeholders meeting at which an already prepared ‘communiqué’ announcing a reconciliation between Shell and Ogoni which would usher in a new era of oil production in the area by Shell was made. For the avoidance of doubt, MOSOP as an organization committed to non-violence supports reconciliation based on honesty, transparency and with no predetermined outcome. Equally MOSOP would support any environmental clean up within the framework of the subsisting recommendations of both the United Nations Secretary General’s Fact finding Team as well as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms in Nigeria.  MOSOP insists that till date no other United Nations organ has taken any other view from these recommendations and no one should be deceived by any references to the United Nations in the current charade.

MOSOP urges all Ogonis and its allies the world over to understand this mindless act of desperation by Shell and its collaborators against the backdrop of recent announcement by the federal government to remove Ogoni oil concessions from Shell. MOSOP urges all Ogoni to refuse to be provoked into taking any precipitate action that will lead us in the path that we have trodden and suffered before. We must resolve not to be deceived by anybody, not even by their supposed religious background, into another crisis.

MOSOP will be advising all its international allies and affiliates of the recent plot and would be making a formal representation to the United Nations whose name has been unduly invoked in the present flawed process.