Almost a month after Bodo, an Ogoni fishing community rejected a 7.5 billion Naira offer for massive spills which sHELL accepted liability for, Bunu, another Ogoni farming community in Tai Local Government Area of Rivers State was on Wednesday 9 October 2013 thrown into a sad mood as one of sHELL’s oil facility located very close to the Rivers State Songhai farm in the community was reported to have spilled and still spill yet to be quantified volume of crude oil.

According to a statement credited to the Mayor of the Local Government Area, Hon GbenekanuKuanpie who visited the site, “the spill was attributed to a failure from one of sHELL’s an un serviced equipment in the area”

Reacting to the ugly incident, Comrade AkpoBari Celestine, Head of Community in Social Action and National Coordinator, Ogoni Solidarity Forum opined that it was time human/environmental rights campaigners all over the world come together in ensuring the immediate implementation of the two-year old UNEP report recommendations on Ogoni environment. According to Comrade AkpoBari, the recurring and ongoing spill would have been averted if the UNEP report that recommended decommissioning was implemented by the President Jonathan government upon the receipt of that Report in August 2011.

POVERTY STRICKEN OGONI FARMERS LOOKING HELPLESS AS OIL SPILL THROUGH THEIR NEWLY CULTIVATED FARMLAND.

Commenting further, Celestine AkpoBari decried a situation where a Niger Delta son as President who benefited immensely from the Ogoni struggle is finding it difficult to implement the outcome of UNEP investigation, which the late Northern President Yar’Aduagraciously and courageously initiated.

During the second anniversary commemoration of the release of the report the Ogoni call a “death sentence”, a three-month ultimatum was given to the Federal Government to commence clean up of their land which UNEP said will take thirty five years to complete. The ultimatimatum which expires on November 9 2013, may mark the beginning of a new phase of the Ogoni environmental campaign as the people have vowed to do everything within their power to compel the government and shell into taking action that will restore back the once beautiful Ogoni environment.

As at the time of filing this report, the oil company was yet to take any positive action to contain the spill while the entire area has been cordoned off and the peoples only access road (Bunu, Baraobara-Kira road) closed to prevent the poverty stricken dispossessed farmers from scooping the flowing crude in trying to prevent it from running into their homes.