t is with deep disappointment—but not surprise—that I respond to the reckless and shameful misrepresentation published by “Champion Newspaper” online on October 30, 2025, regarding the position of the Ogoni Central Indigenous Authority (OCIA) on the failed planned resumption of petroleum exploration in Ogoniland.
The paragraph falsely claiming that “the OCIA is demanding full implementation of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), transparency on $1B HYPREP funds” is not only factually incorrect—it is intellectually dishonest, logically incoherent, and journalistically disgraceful. It is a contradiction so glaring that it insults the intelligence of any reader with a conscience. How can a people who have categorically rejected oil resumption in all its forms simultaneously demand the implementation of an Act designed to facilitate that very resumption? How can a people who condemn the outdated Environmental Impact Assessment Study (EIAS)—the very foundation of the fraudulent HYPREP—glorify HYPREP?
This is not journalism. This is propaganda dressed in borrowed ink.
Let it be known:
The Ogoni people, through the OCIA, have not given consent—explicit or implied—for any petroleum activity to resume in Ogoniland. We do not recognize the PIA, and it does not apply to the Distinct Ogoni Nation (DON). We don’t recognize it. We have nothing to do with the fraudulent HYPREP. We have not asked for the implementation of the PIA. We don’t even know how PIA came about. We have not bartered our right to self-determination for tokenism, concocted press statements, or deceptive development projects. We have not, and we will not.
The OCIA’s position is clear, consistent, and rooted in international law—particularly the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). We reaffirm our right to self-government and resource control as enshrined in the Ogoni Bill of Rights. We are not stakeholders in a conversation we did not initiate. We are not participants in a process we did not authorize. We are a people asserting our indigenous sovereignty over our land, our lives, and our future.
To Champion Newspaper:
You have not only misquoted me—you have attempted to conscript my voice into a narrative that serves the very forces we resist. That is not just unethical. It is dangerous. It is the kind of journalism that enables oppression, sanitizes exploitation, and erodes public trust. You owe your readers better. You owe the truth better.
To the journalist who shrugged and said, “This is Nigeria”— as a journalist myself, I say this:
No. This is not Nigeria. This is not the Nigeria we are fighting to build. This is not the Nigeria Ken Saro-Wiwa died for. This is not the Nigeria the Ogoni Nine were hanged to silence. This is the Nigeria of impunity, of captured institutions, of unprofessional media houses that trade integrity for access. And we reject it.
The Ogoni Nine were not statistics. They were fathers. They were brothers. They were voices. They were the conscience of a wounded land. Their lives were taken not for what they did—but for what they dared to say. They stood for the earth, and the earth mourned when they fell. Ken Saro-Wiwa, an innocent man, was executed for defending the soil beneath our feet. And now, decades later, the same forces return—this time with press releases and policy acts, hoping to rewrite history with a pen dipped in oil.
Let this be a warning to all who seek to distort our words, dilute our struggle, or disguise exploitation as engagement:
We see you. We will name you. And we will resist you—with truth, with memory, and with the unshakable will of a people who have already paid the highest price.
The OCIA speaks for the Ogoni people. Not oil companies. Not government proxies. Not newspapers chasing relevance.
We will not be misquoted into submission.
We will not be edited into silence.
We will not be published into betrayal.
History is watching.
The ancestors are listening.
And the land remembers.
Dr. Goodluck Diigbo
President, Ogoni Central Indigenous Authority (OCIA)
