Ogoni Clean-Up: An Insider’s View

The Ogoniland clean-up means different things to different people and depending on one’s perspective and motive is one’s interpretation and appreciation or vilification of the entire exercise. There are those who see it as a scam, a political ploy to garner votes, a means to oil resumption in Ogoniland, an enterprise to siphon public funds, a deviation from the recommendations of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Report, a snail pace implementation of the UNEP Report, etc. The last opinion is the category that most people fall into; and even people who on their own do not have an opinion have decided to latch unto this view that the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) is working but at a slow pace and yet there is another group that sees the remediation of Ogoniland as what it is, the implementation of the UNEP Report on the environmental assessment of Ogoniland.
The wrong perception of the Ogoniland clean-up stems mainly from the unscientific approach remediation work has over the years been carried out in Nigeria. Opinion leaders who are untrained in the field of environmental remediation had from observation of hitherto poorly executed remediation projects come to think that clean-up of oil spill means mobilizing bulldozers to sites to dig up or maybe cover up impacted soils. This wrong perception of the art, science and practice of remediation has largely informed the upsurge in public opinion that the environmental remediation of oil impacted sites in Ogoniland being carried out by HYPREP is slow but the truth remains that for the first time in the history of the Nigerian oil and gas industry, environmental remediation is being done according to the provisions of the statute book and regulatory documents of the land and international standard practice.
HYPREP came and luckily too under the leadership of Dr. Marvin Dekil, a seasoned environmental remediation expert who deployed his wealth of experience to nurture HYPREP from the ground to a project of giant leap into international visibility. All the while between 2017 and 2018 after the Project Coordination Office (PCO) was set up and it seemed there was no visible activity in the field, the PCO was putting structures in place and also updating the data on the status of those sites earlier studied by UNEP but which due to the delay in the implementation of the UNEP Report submitted in 2011 was left unimplemented by the previous regime for over a period of seven years until President Muhammadu Buhari came to the rescue.
Due to the several public complaints of slowness against the Project, diplomatic missions in Nigeria had to come to the Project Office to see things for themselves and some of them were taken on field visits to the different sites in Ogoni. One of such diplomats was the Norwegian Ambassador to Nigeria, His Excellency Jens-Peter Kjemprud who visited the HYPREP office in February 2018. His Excellency was shown the preparatory works the PCO was doing at the time. The pace of work picked up thereafter and by February 2019 twenty-one remediation contractors were mobilized to twenty-one lots spread across the four Local Government Areas of Ogoniland.
If His Excellency were to visit the twenty-one sites today, he will appreciate the level of work done so far, that despite the initial challenges of inter and intra community land disputes that denied HYPREP access to remediation sites, chieftaincy tussles that hindered its engagement with some of the communities and the heavy rains that hampered remediation activities, it has made remarkable progress. Most of the remediation companies are at the stage of soil treatment preparatory to back filling of treated soil.
In all fairness to those who think HYPREP is slow, is the recognition of their understanding of remediation to mean a product that has no process and time lag while as the fact remains that to proceed to the next stage of remediation you will need the end result of the previous as input for the next and to disregard that sequence is a recipe for sub-standard job which is against the spirit and letter of the UNEP Report. Fastness without observance of the rules will be the reverse side of the slowness bad coin and that will be counterproductive. How fast can HYPREP go then? To the extent that it does not run foul of procurement laws and statutory regulations. To the extent that when it finally tells the Ogoni people and indeed the rest of the world that it is done, it would not have to come back for a repeat performance as William Shakespeare would say in Macbeth, “if it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well.”
In the meantime, the PCO is about to award the contract for the remediation of the second batch of thirty-six lots to remediation companies. While as the UNEP Report recommends provision of potable water for only impacted communities, the PCO is collaborating with the Rivers State Ministry of Water Resources and Rural Development to ensure that more communities have access to potable water. Perhaps this extra step of kindness is what may have emboldened observers to think that HYPREP is not forthcoming with potable water for the people of Ogoniland. HYPREP indeed appreciates their patience for an essential resource as water especially in an environment that is devasted by oil spills. Implementing the UNEP recommendation on the provision of potable water is now at the stage where taps will soon be running in Ogoniland.
The plan for the launch of the HYPREP livelihood training for the first batch of four hundred Ogoni women has been finalized. In the coming days the women being nominated by the leadership of their communities would be called to camp where they will be trained in poultry, fishery, feed production and cropping for a period of six months and there after organized into Co-operative Societies to enable them access funds and put into use the skills so acquired for their benefit and that of their dependents. In addition to the economic empowerment that comes with the alternative livelihood training is the remuneration for the other youths who are already working as community nominees on the twenty-one lots and earning salaries.
HYPREP’s task of remediating Ogoniland and restoring livelihoods is a partnership the project has with the Ogoni people and what that means is that it needs their cooperation and understanding to enable it deliver on its mandate to them. The PCO will implore the people of Ogoni to limit their expectation of HYPREP to only those deliverables that are contained in the UNEP Report. This is so because the Management of the project has observed that some persons either for misinformation or outright mischief are demanding from HYPREP what is not part of its mandate, meanwhile the project is constrained by resources and scope of work to do only those things that it is set for.
Another area that the PCO expects the people of Ogoni to assist it to deliver on its mandate is the issue of re-pollution. HYPREP’s effort to clean Ogoniland will amount to nothing if after investing so much resources and time to remediate the land it is again re-polluted by the activities of illegal bunkering and refining. Thus, the traditional and political leadership of Ogoniland should dissuade the youths from these very poisonous activities to health, environment and the economy, so that whence Ogoniland is cleaned it will remain clean for the present and future generations.
The year 2020 will see an increase in project activities since everything that is contained in the UNEP Report is now an emergency and must be delivered as recommended and also to the specified standards.
The Ogoniland clean-up project is not slow, it is on course and going at a pace that standard remediation practice allows.
Nafo is a Communication Officer of HYPREP and writes in from Port Harcourt.

By: Joseph Nafo