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Ogoni cleanup: Endless wait for restoration, justice

Ogoni cleanup in wrong hands, laden with corruption, Group says

By Amaka Agbu, Port Harcourt

When the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released its report on the environmental devastation of Ogoni land following the oil exploitation and exploration activities of multi-national companies operating in the area, Nigeria and indeed the people of Ogoni heaved a sigh of relief.

Hope was raised for a people who had been groaning under the yoke of environmental pollution and degradation, a people who had been struggling for decades for a clean environment. The Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People, MOSOP, the apex Ogoni cultural organisation, celebrated the report which it viewed as the highway to justice and fair play after more than five decades of environmental pollution, struggle, diseases, and death.

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The report, in which the Nigerian government was thoroughly indicted, was submitted by UNEP in August, 2011, to the Goodluck Jonathan administration which initiated it. Long after the submission of the report, Daily Times gathered that there didn’t seem to be any forward movement towards its implementation until June 2, 2016, when Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, representing President Muhammadu Buhari, in a groundbreaking ceremony flagged off the much-awaited cleanup of the devastated oil-rich Ogoni land.

In the same year, the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) was established under the Federal Ministry of Environment to clean up the land. But nine years after the submission of the report and four years after the flag-off of its implementation, how has Ogoniland fared?

How satisfied are the people of Ogoni and the government and people of the state at large? In May last year, having lost faith in the sincerity of the process, MOSOP issued a press release in which it called for the dissolution of the governing body of HYPREP, which the movement had consistently accused of massive embezzlement of funds far provided by the government.

The President of MOSOP, Fegalo Nsuke, said in a statement then: said: “The questionable integrity of managers of the cleanup project were not strange to MOSOP as at least one of them had an unresolved issue with the EFCC over bribery and mismanagement of MOSOP funds.” He also said that the people of Ogoni were not carried along in the project.

Also expressing displeasure in the cleanup process, the President of Ogoni Oil Producing Communities Youth Forum, Barichuka Loye, said in Port Harcourt last weekend that Kee Dere, one of the impacted communities in Ogoniland has not seen any of the emergency measures that were supposed to be provided by HYPREP. He said: “Those youths involved in artisan refinery have not been engaged by HYPREP. This is in defiance of the recommendations of UNEP. The illegal refining activities of those youths, as we all know, pollute the environment. They are supposed to be engaged for that to end.

“We are not happy. We are calling on the presidency to call HYPREP to order or find a means of them adhering to the recommendations in the report. So far, they have not adhered to the recommendations of the agency.”

Also the Programme Manager of Environmental Rights Action and Friends of the Earth, Mike Karikpo, said there is a litany of discontent from the people of Ogoni and described the nine years of the submission of the report as motion without movement.

“My evaluation of HYPREP over the last three years is that it has failed to deliver on the promise that it made or was made when it was set up and when the Vice President launched the Ogoni cleanup project in 2016. It has failed and there is discontent in the Ogoni communities. People are complaining, people are agitated and we need to do something to reverse that trend,” he said. When the cleanup project seemed to fall below the expectations of the people, tempers began to flare. Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike was one of the forces to join the Ogoni to condemn the delay in the process. He declared that the Federal Government was playing games with the exercise, adding that the Ogoni cleanup could only succeed when the Federal Government stopped playing politics with the programme.

Wike spoke during a courtesy visit by the Minister of Environment, Dr. Mohammad Mahmood Abubakar, to him at the Government House Port Harcourt, recently. He urged the Federal Government to come with the terms for the implementation of the Ogoni cleanup exercise as recommended in the UNEP Report. Governor Wike noted that since 2016 when the Ogoni cleanup exercise was flagged off, no tangible milestone had been achieved.

“I am not happy that the Rivers State Government is not part of the cleanup exercise. Nobody has ever briefed the State Government. The programme has been politicised,” he complained.

The Governor said rather than tell the world the level of success attained, the Federal Government had continued to circulate the same old story of handing over remediation sites to contractors.

“It’s unfortunate that no tangible effort has been achieved. Handing over remediation site to contractors does not mean the work has been done.”

Speaking also during a special appearance on Silverbird Television Programme, News Hub, Governor Wike said that the Ogoni cleanup was only mentioned whenever election approached. He said: “The issue of Ogoni cleanup comes up during every election. It is a political strategy to curry political favour. If they are serious, they should use funds from the excess crude, the way they have done for insurgency. The environmental crisis in Ogoniland is a major challenge.”

However the Coordinator of the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) Dr. Marvin Barinemnwin Dekil, blamed the slow pace of work on the remediation of the oilimpacted site of Ogoniland on the technical nature of the exercise. Dr. Dekil who expressed concern over the agitation of Ogoni and other stakeholders over the slow pace, said that the project was more technical than physical and called on Ogoni people to exercise restraint in condemning it and show understanding.

The coordinator who spoke in Port Harcourt weekend on the project, as a guest of the FM Rhythm radio news programme, View Point, explained: “The process is a 25 to 30 years programme. The first one and a half years have been used in setting up the processes. We have only been one year into remediation. So, why all the cries?

People need to be patient and understand that what we are doing is a slow process project and which is highly expensive.

“People are thinking that this HYPREP project is building houses, building roads, building new environments, in terms of physical environment. No. It is a technical one for your environment.”

He said that the stakeholders in Ogoniland must work collectively in order to achieve the cleanup process and not antagonise it. Meanwhile, for the impacted people of Ogoni, the wait is long. The long journey to the restoration of their land is just beginning. Until they have access to potable water and other basic amenities as recommended by UNEP, all entreaties for patience might be falling on deaf ears.

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Ihesiulo Grace

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