HYPREP’S Actions Worry CSOs In Rivers

Some Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in Rivers State have expressed serious dissatisfaction with actions taken by the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) so far towards the Ogoni clean-up exercise.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with The Tide shortly after a ‘Review/Update Meeting on the Status Of The Ogoni Clean-Up Process’, organised by Kebetkachi Women Development Resource Centre in partnership with Civil Society Coalition for Environmental Sustainability, last Friday, in Port Harcourt, the Chairman, Civil Society Coalition for Environmental Sustainability, Young Kigbara, admitted that HYPREP activities have shown clear lack of openness, accountability and transparency.
Kigbara noted that the CSOs’ outcry became necessary in order to push HYPREP to take more drastic and proactive actions to open the system to external scrutiny, evaluation and verification.
“In fact, it does not mean that HYPREP is not taking some actions, but we are not satisfied with actions they have taken thus far. We are not saying that they are not making attempts, but their attempts are not satisfactory”, he argued.
He explained that in every society, there were people who support evil just to benefit out of the sufferings of others, adding that the lack of openness creates the impression that something wrong was happening in the system.
“There are many portfolio carrying contractors; they have companies in their pockets and most of them are not the ones really affected by these oil spills, and so, those ones will sing praises for HYPREP.
“The truth is that if HYPREP does the right thing, we will praise them for that. If not for some of our interventions at the moment, some communities would have been on fire by now, but we have stopped telling them ‘we will handle it non-violently’ which has been the principle of which the Ogoni struggle was prosecuted and is still being prosecuted,” Kigbara added.

Susan Serekara-Nwikhana