Stakeholders in Ogoni kingdom have called on the Federal Government to commence the process of restructuring the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) for maximum result in the clean-up of Ogoniland.
In the call made by the Gbo Kabaari, the forum of Ogoni elders and leaders, sought for a comprehensive overhaul of HYPREP across all levels of its current structure.
The group’s chairman, Senator Bennett Birabi, who spoke in Port Harcourt on Monday, said there was urgent need to restructure and re-jigg HYPREP given the enormous negative reports it had received from UNEP, Amnesty International, Environmental Rights Actions/Friends of the Earth, Friends of the Earth Europe and other organised bodies.
Birabi said that the Amnesty International, Environmental Rights Actions, Friends of the Earth, Friends of the Earth Europe and Milieudefensie had in a joint report, titled ‘No Clean up, No Justice’, highlighted the litany of failures in HYPREP such as the limited scope of the clean-up, slow progress and flawed clean-up operations.
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Others, he said, included 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 had 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.
