Ogoni stakeholders have described President Bola Tinubu’s recent posthumous national awards to the Ogoni 4 as a ploy to negotiate the resumption of oil exploration activities in the beleaguered ethnic nation.
Tinubu, on September 23, 2025, bestowed posthumous national awards on Edward Kobani, Albert Bade, Samuel Orage, and Theophilus Orage, popularly referred to as the Ogoni 4.
Kobani and others lost their lives during the upheavals in Ogoni in 1994, which subsequently led to trial and execution of the Ogoni 9 – renowned author, Ken Saro Wiwa and eight others.
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Speaking with our correspondent in Port Harcourt on September 25, 2025, stakeholders from Ogoni said that the conferment of national awards on the Ogoni 9, and later Ogoni 4, was an effort by President Tinubu to achieve the resumption of oil exploration activities in the ethnic nation.
Celestine Akpobari, environmental rights activist said the issue before Ogoni people is the conferment of national awards, but of environmental justice, remediation and restoration of the degraded environment.
“The awards to the 4 and 9 are in order but those awards and recognitions will not solve the environmental issues in Ogoni and the Niger Delta.”
He said that a visit to Oloibiri (where oil was first discovered in commercial quantity in Nigeria) proved the deplorable conditions in which host communities exist.
“I went to Otuasiga called Oloibiri yesterday and the women said they haven’t seen electricity for the past 21 years. I took a picture of the only theatre in their so-called hospital.
“Our problems are beyond awards. I am more angry that the President is giving these awards because he wants the oil in Ogoni,” Akpobari said.
Fynface Dumnamene, executive director of YEAC-Nigeria, pointed out that the awards might be part of the recommendations made by Ogoni elders during their meeting with President Tinubu in Abuja earlier in the year.
Dumnamene agreed that the awards might “all be for oil resumption in Ogoni,” adding “I think they (Ogoni elders) recommended this to him as part of the earlier honours to Ogoni 9.”
Friday Nbani, Executive Director of Lekeh Foundation, stressed that the recognition “is just a strategy that the President wants to use to penetrate for reopening oil extraction in Ogoni.
“If the President has a genuine intention of giving that honour to the people in the environmental struggle, why attach it to oil extraction at the same time, at the same day, at the same hour, at the same moment,” he said.
Nbani noted the environmental degradation in the Niger Delta, particularly Ogoni, stressing the for a holistic approach to remediating the situation in the region.
He said that rather than benefit from the oil in the land, host communities have been the worst for it, suffering decades of degradation and devastation of the ecosystem.
“I’ve never seen communities that oil have developed, especially in Nigeria. I’ve never seen ‘because they are giving oil, that’s why this community is different from other communities or other regions that do not give oil and gas.’
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“If Ogonis and Niger Delta have abundance of oil and gas resources to feed Nigeria, why is it that even the petroleum products that we buy in Bori and others, are much higher in price than other people that don’t have oil.
“What I am saying is that Mr. President is negotiating on oil and gas with Ogoni, Ogoni leaders. That is what he is doing.
“He should rather focus on Ogoni and Niger Delta people that are living in polluted environment, eating polluted food. Our soil is being contaminated with crude oil. Even our blood now has crude oil in our blood.
“We did a research on fishes in the water, and the fishes contain crude oil. The pollution has changed the genetic toxicology of the fish.
“So this is something that the Federal Government is supposed to put more attention on, and also the poverty that is glaring in the region,” Nbani said.
