Development expert and member of the Ogoni Dialogue Committee, Collins Lebeteh, has addressed growing tension among stakeholders over reports of oil activities resuming in Ogoniland.
Speaking on Thursday, September 3, 2026, during a live chat on Ogoni Rant TV, Lebeteh explained the relationship between the Ogoni Bill of Rights and the committee’s recommendations as talks on possible crude oil resumption continue.
He described the Ogoni Bill of Rights as a historic document and a development vision for Ogoniland. He said the Dialogue Committee report is only a framework to translate those demands into practical steps, and should not be seen as a replacement.
“The Ogoni Dialogue Committee in their wisdom has come to say, okay, what we are doing is like a framework, developing a framework that we use for achieving what Ogoni people demanded,” he said.
Lebeteh noted that the Bill of Rights was adopted by the Ogoni people in August 1990 and presented to the Federal Government under General Ibrahim Babangida. He said it remains central to the Ogoni struggle.
According to him, the document went beyond protesting oil exploitation. It outlined demands for political autonomy, resource control, environmental protection, education, healthcare, agriculture, and the preservation of Ogoni cultural identity.
He added that the Bill of Rights was born out of decades of oil exploitation that left Ogoniland with environmental degradation and little benefit. Those experiences, he said, led to organized resistance by Ogoni leaders, including the formation of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, MOSOP. The Bill of Rights was designed to answer fundamental questions about the problems, solutions, actors, location, and method of achieving development.
Lebeteh clarified that the Dialogue Committee was set up to provide a framework for implementing many of the aspirations in the historic document, not to replace it.
He also dismissed claims that the process was restricted to Abuja. He said the committee went back to Ogoni communities to collect memoranda containing demands such as state creation, resource control, employment, environmental protection, and compliance with international environmental standards.
He further stated that the dialogue provides an opportunity to reinterpret some demands of the Bill of Rights within Nigeria’s current legal and constitutional framework, including the 1999 Constitution and laws guiding the oil and gas industry.
