Mkpoikana Udoma

Port Harcourt — In a bid to prevent re-pollution and ensure the success of the Ogoni cleanup project, the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project, HYPREP, says it has begun working with ex-artisanal refiners to sensitize communities on the importance of environmental protection.

The Project Coordinator of HYPREP, Prof. Nenibarini Zabbey, announced significant progress in the Ogoni cleanup project, with the Centre of Excellence for Environmental Remediation, CEER, now 60% complete, up from 20% in the last quarter.

Zabbey speaking at the 2024 Quarter II Stakeholder and Regulators Review Meeting of the project, attributed the progress to the federal government’s priority to accelerate the cleanup and HYPREP’s commitment to quality and transparency.

The HYPREP boss said the review was imperative to update stakeholders on the achievements that have been recorded within the last quarter, get feedback, and also share challenges facing the project; noting that the project has made significant progress, but communal disputes and re-pollution were a concern.

“One of the priorities of the renewed hope agenda is to accelerate the Ogoni cleanup and that is what we are doing, which means more projects will take place concurrently, and in doing so, it means we have to increase our manpower, to ensure that quality is not compromised.

“We are very critical when it comes to the issue of re-pollution, that is why in every forum we talk about the need to prevent the re-pollution of areas we are cleaning and to prevent oil spills. Oil spills are inevitable because there could be accidents, but then it becomes an issue when people deliberately hack pipelines leading to oil spills.

“A spill that is caused by an individual might take many years to clean by many persons accompanied by a lot of resources. So, we will continue to work with ex-artisanal refiners to sensitize the public on the need to prevent the re-pollution of our environment.”

To ensure the project’s success, HYPREP said it has established a technical committee with UNEP and SPDC, a remediation document review committee, and a milestone evaluation committee.

“Significant progress has been recorded, for instance during our last meeting the CEER was at 20 percent completion but today it is at 60 percent completion.

“The federal government’s priority is to accelerate the Ogoni cleanup, so we have to ensure that while we are making significant progress in shoreline cleanup, remediation of medium-risk complex sites, and we are also assessing high-risk complex sites so that there will be a kind of overlap between these projects,” Zabbey said.

Stakeholders at the meeting, including the Stakeholder Democracy Network, SDN and Centre for Environment, Human Rights Development, CHERD, commended the progress made so far, urging continued transparency and engagement of technical staff to ensure quality of the project is not compromised.

Head of Environment, Stakeholders Democracy Network, Mr. Jude Ikenna Samuelson, particularly tasked HYPREP to ensure sharp practices are discouraged by contractors handling mangrove restoration project

“In the last one year, the progress on the project has been very commendable, several projects are going on concurrently. We have also observed that as many projects are ongoing, it is also strategic for HYPREP to employ more technical staff so that quality will not be compromised.”