YEAC, PARTNERS MARK 27th Remembrance Of The Hanging Of The Ogoni-9
Youths and Environmental Advocacy Centre(YEAC-Nigeria) in partnership with Indigenous People’s Movement for Self-determination and Liberation(IPMSDL), Ogoni Solidarity Forum (OSF) including Africa Network for Environment and Economic Justice (ANEEJ), organised the Indigenous Peoples Heroes Day, 2022.
The program started with candle light procession in partnership with the National Youth Council of Ogoni (NYCOP) on November 9 in Bori-Ogoni and cumulated into a community-wide event held in Gure community in Khana local government area (Ogoni land) of Rivers State, Niger Delta region on November 10, marking the “27th Remembrance Of The Hanging Of The Ogoni 9”
The Executive Director Youths and Environmental Advocacy Centre (YEAC-Nigeria) Fyneface Dumnamene Fyneface, on behalf of the partners said the choice of Gure community as the venue of this year’s program was because it was the community where Ken Saro-Wiwa made his last address before his arrest in 1994 and eventual hanging on November 10, 1995.
He said, this year’s event is a place and an event used to remember 27 years after the incident.
“We choose this community as a venue of the program and as a day that Advocacy Centre, working with the community people, people from the Ogoni communities that gather in Gure community, will traditionally dedicate the Ogoni struggle and dedicate the land traditionally, and to God. “This is the traditional rededication of the Ogoni struggle with the theme; Learn from our past, fight for our future.”
During the event, people shared their experiences, enumerating the things they needed the government to do for them.
The Executive Director, further used the opportunity to call on the government of Nigeria not to let the labor of the heroes of Ogoni go in vain by ensuring that they address the issues for which they were killed.
Highlighting the three pillars of the Ogoni struggle.
“The issue of environmental degradation, the issue of political marginalization and Economic strangulation. “When we talk about the Environmental degradation. We are talking about the pollution in Ogoni land. For which HYPREP Is trying to carry out the cleanup, but, its not being done according to specification.”
Today, November 10th, 2022 the people of Ogoni world wide remember their fallen heroes and how they were killed. They are calling on the authorities, to address the issues for which the heroes were killed in 1995.