Almost everyone in the Netherlands who writes about Nigeria knows Sunny Ofehe, founder of the Hope for the Niger Delta Campaign.
In his fight for peace and against oil pollution in the Niger Delta, he provided information and organized conferences, spoke at a hearing on Shell from the House of Representatives and traveled to the Niger Delta with SP Member of Parliament Sharon Gesthuizen.
He also helped me with valuable contacts. From his living room in Rotterdam, full of photos in which he shakes hands with prominent figures such as former Prime Minister Balkenende, he called the Niger Delta to make arrangements. Ofehe, after being recognized as a refugee in the Netherlands – his mother was strangled in Nigeria in 2007 to ‘silence him,’ he once said – has grown into a fairly well-known and respected activist.
Fixed for two weeks
Until that disgraceful day, February 21, 2011. At six o’clock in the morning he was knocked on the door and twenty troopers entered his house to search it for five hours. Ofehe was detained for two weeks: he was charged with forgery and cooperating in the ‘human smuggling’ of one person. The most serious indictment followed six months later: international terrorism, because Ofehe in (tapped) telephone calls had incited an attack on an oil pipeline in Nigeria.
Ofehe has always stated that he did not want to arrange in those conversations that he and journalist Mark Schenkel of NRC Handelsblad could be present as oil thieves, so ‘ordinary’ criminals, once again made their mark – precisely to expose their criminal and polluting practices. set. However, the Public Prosecution Service (OM) did not relent.
Read More: Sunny Ofehe on Amnesty Inernational