MOSOP Seeks Stakeholders’ Support On Ogoni Clean-Up

The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) have called on communities in Ogoni to support laid down procedure for the clean-up of the area.
President of MOSOP, Legborsi Pyagbara made the call during a one day sensitization on the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) for Ogoni stakeholders in Tai Local Government Area of Rivers State.
The programme supported by CORDAID has as its theme “Strengthening Community Awareness on the UNEP Report and Ogoni Cleanup Process’, with partici­pants selected from Khana, Gokana, Tai and Eleme, the four local government areas in Ogoni.
Top on the programme was the need to understand the activities of Hydrocarbon Pol­lution and Remediation Proj­ect (HYPREP) in the cleanup of polluted sites in Ogoni land and how the federal government sub organ, Creation of the Central Representative Advisory Committee (CRAC) can mediate between the communities and the agency during the process.
Pyagbara who spoke on the topic “Appraising the Governance Model of the Hydrocarbon Pollution and Remedia­tion Project (HYPREP)’, said based on series of protests by Ogoni people over degradation of the environment caused by oil spill, HYPREP was set up by the federal government to among other things develop concepts for sustainable development of the area so that the community can benefit maxi­mum from the cleanup and start to see “peace dividend”.
He added that the es­sence of the programme was “to let people know the role of HPYREP, CRAC which is an organ of HYPREP that mediate between the commu­nity people and HYPREP, the community people and the Board of Trustee in the clean-up exercise.”
He noted that participants at the programme would re­turn to their communi­ties to sensitize their people on the activities bothering on the clean-up project.