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By Joel Anekwe
Gbo Kabaari, a forum of Ogoni elders and leaders has scored Hydro Carbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) low, and called for a comprehensive overhaul, and restructuring across all levels of the agency’s current structure.
The chairman of the group, Senator Bennett Birabi, who spoke to journalists in Port Harcourt on Monday said there was an urgent need to restructure and re-jig HYPREP given enormous negative assessment reports it has received from UNEP, Amnesty International, Environmental Rights Actions/Friends of the Earth, Friends of the Earth Europe and the Milieudefensie.
Dr Birabi said that the organisations had in a joint report titled ‘No Clean up, No Justice’ highlighted a litany of failures in HYPREP, such as the limited scope of the clean up, slow progress, flawed clean up operations, poor monitoring of remediation activities, failure to set up the Centre of Excellence as recommended in the UNEP report, failure to implement emergency measures, failure to take steps to prevent future pollution as well as lack of expertise among consultants and contractors.
He said that the agency has performed abysmally low in the core areas of its mandate such as emergency measures, clean up of land contamination, clean up of sediments, restoration of artisanal and rehabilitation, mangrove restoration and rehabilitation, surveillance and monitoring, as well as alternative employment to those in artisanal refining.
He said that the position of both UNEP and Amnesty International corroborate its repeated stance on HYPREP.
Dr Birabi said that HYPREP as presently structured cannot function efficiently to deliver on an important and colossal project, adding that the UNEP report which necessitated the establishment of HYPREP highlighted the ranging environmental emergency in Ogoniland.
“Worse still, this complex governance structure is largely composed of political appointees with indefinite tenures of appointment, as well as representatives of the oil companies that polluted Ogoniland. Also, as we have noted before, HYPREP as presently constituted, has no life of its own. It was set up by Presidential directives and has no legislative instrument to give it a life, impetus and legal personality.
“HYPREP as presently structured and constituted, exist at the pleasures and mercies of the President. We strongly believe that that should not be the case for an important project such as this. Our assessment of the scoping process shows a lack of understanding of the complexities and dynamics of remediation activities. As stated in the UNEP report some sites that were previously certified cleaned and remediated were found to be still heavily polluted decades after.
“The only explanation for this is that contracts were awarded to companies lacking the technology and technological capability, and a complicit regulatory body or personnel that certified the sites as remediated,” he said.
The project coordinator of HYPREP, Dr Marvin Dekil, told journalists in Port Harcourt during the 9th anniversary of the submission of UNEP report on Ogoni to Federal Government said the project had overcome its teething problems and has fully embarked on the remediation of impacted sites.
He said that HYPREP used the first one and half years to put machineries on ground and went into full remediation in January, 2019
