Ogoni Clean-Up: HYPREP Engages Illegal Oil Refiners

The Hydrocarbon Pollution and Remediation Project (HYPREP), says it has engaged illegal oil refiners in Ogoni communities of Khana, Gokana, Tai and Eleme local government areas of Rivers State in the clean-up process.
The Project Coordinator, HYPREP, Dr. Marvin Dekil, made the disclosure in Port Harcourt, while giving an account of the activities of the team over the last 100 days in office.
Dekil noted that artisanal refiners in the area have been engaged in the clean-up so that they will not continue to impact negatively on the area while the clean-up was going on.
The coordinator noted that when HYPREP met the illegal refiners, they (illegal refiners) promised to discontinue activities that are harmful to the environment.
He said that several of the youth, who illegally refined oil, have been engaged and retrained by the body to ensure that they were useful in the clean-up process.
“We met with the leadership of Ogoni ex-artisanal refiners. We had enlightened them about the project, and they promised not to be involved in such activities again having received our message that the trade is harmful to their heath, the society and the environment.
“We gave them the task of identifying the skills they would want us to train them on as an alternative source of livelihood for them,” Dekil added.
Speaking on the clean-up process, Dekil appealed to Ogonis in particular, and the entire people of Rivers State, to exercise more patience over the delay in the implementation of Ogoni clean-up exercise.
Dekil, who made the appeal at a press conference organised to mark his 100 days in office, in Port Harcourt, said it has become necessary to explain the process of the clean up to Ogonis.
He stated that, “the clean-up is done through proper assessment, characterization of the site, finding each of the pollutants, isolating them as well as identifying the best possible technology for removing them and these processes take time, skills and expertise”.
The coordinator added that there were processes and procedures involved in the Ogoni clean-up exercise that would require more time and patience from the affected communities to understand.
“Those baseline work, information gathering, and planning take time, and it is important that we reiterate again that you are not going to be seeing bulldozers in the field because that is not the way to do it.
“As for the report that we are not doing anything, that is wrong because we are doing so much, we are laying those scientific building blocks that will lead to an effective and professional clean-up exercise,” he added.
Dekil also hinted that in the past 100 days, his committee has embarked on educating and enlightening the people on the processes involved in the Ogoni clean-up project, adding that members of the affected communities have been engaged in the sensitisation exercise.
“We have met community leaders, youth, women, paramount rulers and their council of chiefs to explain to us their needs, and what was common is that ‘they need water’. Incidentally, that is one of the key recommendations of the report, ‘provision of potable water,” Dekil noted.
The Tide investigations show that HYPREP had visited Bodo, K-Dere, and Kpor communities, among others, as part of plans to commence the act of clean-up of oil impacted sites in Ogoni.
It would be recalled that the coordinator of HYPREP had earlier this month said that stakeholders had begun efforts to provide emergency water supply to address the concerns of Ogoni people, adding that in the next three months, project implementation would have been activated.

Susan Serekara-Nwikhana