MOSOP Chides FG Over Non-Implementation Of UNEP’s Report

The Movement for the Sur
vival of Ogoni People (MOSOP has described the setting up of hydrocarbon pollution and restoration (HYPREP) by the federal Government as against the Ogoni restoration Authority recommended by the United Nation environment Pollution (UNEP) report as political and against the interest of the Ogonis.
Three prominent Ogoni sons including the Media/Public Adviser to MOSOP President, Bari-ara Kpalap; a human rights activist, Celestine Akpobari, and  President of MOSOP USA, Micheal Akaku stated this on Saturday in a live radio programme in Port Harcourt, “View Point” they argued that the establishment of HYPREP was not part of the UNEP’s recommendation to clean up Ogoni after 30 years of pollution of the area.
They said the action of the Federal government amounted to genocide through contaimination of the polluted environment adding that the establishment of HYPREP did not meet the standard UNEP recommendation.
According to them UNEP recommended that an Ogoni restoration Authority should be created, but the Federal Government set up HYPREP without framework and mandate.
They noted that even after the establishment of the HYPRE, the government failed to back it with law, saying the agency has a very bogus and high mandate which made it difficult to deal with issue of clean up, in Ogoni land.
“When you say clean-up of the whole Nigeria, HYPREP has no technical capacity to deal with such assignment, it means that the Federal Government is not serious dealing with that problem.
:It does not have any framework for the implementation of that mandate. The Federal Government’s attitude has shown to the Ogoni people that it is not ready to follow the UEP report. Since the HYPREP was set up, there has not been any budgetary allocation to the body.
“The agency is currently boxed by issues of unpaid salaries and power struggle between the national Co-ordinator, Joy Nwinee and the Minister of Petroleum, Mrs Dieziani Allison Madueke. The Ogoni protested the establishment of HYPREP because it did not meet the standard of the recommendation of the UNEP report.
“UNEP specifically said, establish Ogoni Restoration Authority and also form an Ogoni restoration Fund. These two things were not done and the Federal Government went ahead to set up HYPREP and in setting up HYPREP, it was done with a political motive because it was set up one year after the release of the report without any serious mandate”, Kpalap said.
Akposari who also spoke during the live radio programme, warned that the issue of the clean up of Ogoni should not be polticized, accusing the Federal Government of insincerity and insensitivity to the plight of the Ogoni.
According to him, before the UNEP report was released in 2011, environment pollution in Ogoni and warned that if something was not urgently done, there was going to be a public health crisis.
But till date, even the minimum recommendation, including setting up of cancer registries for people to be tested has not been done”, he said.
Akaku, in his own contribution, regretted that three years after the UNEP’s report, the Federal Government headed by a Niger Deltan was yet to commence the clean-up and in fact has nothing in place to implement the UNEP report.