ONE year after the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) submitted its environmental assessment report on Ogoniland, the Federal Government is yet to commence the clean up and remediation of the area.
Following intense pressure from Ogoni people and international civil society groups, the government on the eve of the first anniversary of the report, announced the setting up of Hydrocarbon Pollution Restoration Project (HYPREP).
To commemorate the first anniversary of government’s insouciance despite United Nations Under-Secretary General and Executive Director of the UNEP, Achim Steiner’s position that there are serious threats to human health from contaminated drinking water to concerns over the viability and productivity of ecosystems, hundreds of irate Ogonis took to the streets of Ogale-Eleme, in protest.
On same day, the Congress of the Ogoni People held at the Peace and Freedom Centre, Bori, to express concern that contrary to UNEP recommendation to set up an Ogoni Environment Restoration Agency that is specific to Ogoni, the Federal Government has decided to set up a programme with wider scope to cover other areas experiencing hydrocarbon pollution and hope that this broad jurisdiction will not undermine the implementation of the UNEP report.
The $9.5 million UNEP independent scientific assessment, funded by Shell, had revealed that at Nisisioken Ogale-Eleme, families have been drinking water from wells that is contaminated with benzene– a known carcinogen– at levels over 900 times above World Health Organization guidelines, and had recommended that potable water be provided for the community.
Concerned about the dire condition in which they are subjected to live, infuriated indigenes of Ogale-Eleme, embarked on a mass protest to draw the attention of the government and the world to their plight.
The King of Ogale-Eleme, Godwin Bebe Okpabi, who led the protest expressed disappointment that one year after the shocking report was released, the Federal government has not deemed it expedient to provide them potable drinking water and commence the clean up of their devastated environment. There has also not been an intensive public health programme in Ogoni, including cancer screening and treatment.
Okpabi, who was visibly enraged, said it was saddening that the government has failed to appreciate the enormity of the health crisis threatening the lives of innocent citizens whose only sin is being born in an oil producing community.
“If you have been drinking water that is contaminated with benzene 900 percent and your people are drinking, you have cancer in your body, what are you living for?” he said.
One of the organisers of the protest, Kabari Kadilo, said they were spurred to take to the streets to draw the federal government’s attention to the dire situation in Ogale-Eleme and the entire Ogoniland inhabited by endangered humans.
Details of this report revealed that pollution in Ogoni where oil exploration and exploitation began in 1958, had penetrated further and deeper than many in the Niger Delta could have ever fathomed.
The UNEP assessment, which has been described as unprecedented, took over 14-month period to prepare. The experts that produced this report, examined more than 200 locations, surveyed 122 kilometres of pipeline rights of way, reviewed more than 5,000 medical records and engaged over 23,000 people at local community meetings.
Detailed soil and groundwater contamination investigations were conducted at 69 sites, which ranged in size from 1,300 square metres (Barabeedom-K.dere, Gokana local government area (LGA) to 79 hectares (Ajeokpori-Akpajo, Eleme LGA).
All together, more than 4,000 samples were analyzed, including water taken from 142 groundwater-monitoring wells drilled specifically for the study and soil extracted from 780 boreholes.
Some of the United Nations team’s findings revealed that there are at least 10 Ogoni communities where drinking water is contaminated with high levels of hydrocarbons.
The MOSOP Provisional Council chairman, Professor Ben Naanen and Bishop Solomon Gberegbara (a member), observed that considering the tradition of poor project implementation in Nigeria, the Ogoni people are deeply concerned that HYPREP may join the graveyard of failed projects in the country.
Their reservation notwithstanding, the Ogoni people have decided to give the Federal Government the benefit of the doubt by accepting HYPREP, realising that other parts of the Niger Delta also suffer oil-related pollution like Ogoni, and having received guarantees from the representatives of HYPREP and NOSDRA.
The Congress had demanded that the UNEP recommendations on Ogoni should be fully and faithfully implemented irrespective of HYPREP’s intervention in other areas. In addition, they have demanded that the one billion US dollars recommended by UNEP as start-up fund for Ogoni clean up for the first five years must be spent on Ogoni alone.
The Guardian visit to the area revealed that the Federal government has not provided any of the affected communities with potable drinking water. Pathetically, in Ogale-Eleme, where people were said to be drinking water from wells containing high level of benzene, there is no cancer-screening center in existence. There is no social or economic project of the Federal Government in existence in the whole of Ogoni.
Presently, Rivers State government supplies water through tankers to Ogale-Eleme. Naanen has described this approach as unsustainable and has demanded the construction of a water treatment plant in the area.
The federal government has failed one year after the report was presented to President Jonathan, to establish an Ogoniland Environmental Restoration Authority that would oversee implementation of the study’s recommendations. HYPREP, the people said cannot be said to have been specifically established for Ogoni.
There does not exist presently an Environmental Restoration Fund for Ogoniland. UNEP had recommended that fund should be set up with an initial capital injection of US$1 billion contributed by the oil industry and the government, to cover the first five years of the clean up project.
Even the recommendation for an Integrated Contaminated Soil Management Centre, to be built in Ogoniland and supported by hundreds of potentially mini treatment centres, to treat contaminated soil and provide hundreds of job opportunities is yet to be considered.
UNEP in its recommendation had stated that through a combination of approaches, individual contaminated land areas in Ogoniland can be cleaned up within five years, while the restoration of heavily-impacted mangrove stands and swamplands will take up to 30 years. And Ogoni people feel that everyday of government’s inaction aggravates an already precarious situation.
It would be recalled that issues in the quest for the right to protect the Ogoni environment and ecology from further degradation and right to control and use a fair proportion of Ogoni economic resources for Ogoni development among others had spurred Ken Saro-Wiwa, prolific writer, business-man, minority rights campaigner and environmentalist to create MOSOP and draft the Ogoni Bill of Rights (OBR).
Excerpts from the Ogoni Bill of Rights, which was written by Saro-Wiwa that was presented to the Federal Government and people of Nigeria in August 26, 1990 reads:
• That oil was struck and produced in commercial quantities on our land in 1958 at K. Dere
(Bomu oilfield). Ogoni Bill of Rights
• That oil has been mined on our land since 1958 to this day from the following oilfields: (i) Bomu (ii) Bodo West (iii) Tai (iv) Korokoro (v) Yorla (vi) Lubara Creek and (vii) Afam by Shell Petroleum Development Company (Nigeria) Limited.
• That in over 30 years of oil mining, the Ogoni nationality have provided the Nigerian nation with a total revenue estimated at over 40 billion Naira (N40 billion) or 30 billion dollars.
• That in return for the above contribution, the Ogoni people have received NOTHING.
• That today, the Ogoni people have: (i) No representation whatsoever in ALL institutions of the Federal Government of Nigeria; (ii) No pipe-borne water; (iii) No electricity;
(iv) No job opportunities for the citizens in Federal, State, public sector or private sector companies;
• That the Ethnic policies of successive Federal and State Governments are gradually pushing the Ogoni people to slavery and possible extinction.
• That the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited does not employ Ogoni people at a meaningful or any level at all, in defiance of the Federal government s regulations.
• That the search for oil has caused severe land and food shortages in Ogoni one of the most densely populated areas of Africa (average: 1,500 per square mile; national average: 300 per square mile).
• That neglectful environmental pollution laws and substandard inspection techniques of the Federal authorities have led to the complete degradation of the Ogoni environment, turning our homeland into an ecological disaster.
• That the Ogoni people lack education, health and other social facilities.
• That it is intolerable that one of the richest areas of Nigeria should wallow in abject poverty and destitution.
• That successive Federal administrations have trampled on every minority right enshrined in the Nigerian Constitution to the detriment of the Ogoni and have by administrative
structuring and other noxious acts transferred Ogoni wealth exclusively to other parts of the Republic.
? That the Ogoni people wish to manage their own affairs.
NOW, therefore, while reaffirming our wish to remain a part of the Federal Republic of Nigeria,
we make demand upon the Republic as follows:
• That the Ogoni people be granted POLITICAL AUTONOMY to participate in the affairs of the Republic as a distinct and separate unit by whatever name called, provided that this Autonomy guarantees the following: Ogoni Bill of Rights (i) Political control of Ogoni affairs by Ogoni people; (ii) The right to the control and use of a fair proportion of OGONI economic resources for Ogoni development; (iii) Adequate and direct representation as of right in all Nigerian national institutions; (iv) The use and development of Ogoni languages in all Nigerian territory;
(v) The full development of Ogoni culture; (vi) The right to religious freedom; and (vii) The right to protect the OGONI environment and ecology from further degradation.
MOSOP Bureau of Information & Publicity in the United States, which described petroleum as the symbol of Ogoni agonies and pains, said billions of US dollars worth of oil and gas has been carted away from Ogoni land since 1958 when oil was discovered. In return for this, the Ogoni people have received nothing.
And in spite of the enormous wealth of their land the Ogoni people continue to live in pristine conditions in the absence of electricity, pipe-borne water, hospitals, housing and schools.
Former MOSOP president, Ledum Mitee, had written to President Goodluck Jonathan, in November, 2011, to remind him that findings contained in the UNEP report were not theoretical risks but reports of exposure to a daily hazard for which UNEP recommended immediate actions and health checks in these communities.
Mitee said Ogoni people see implementation of the report as a vital first step that could demonstrate how to reverse decades of damage from oil spills across the Niger Delta. However, he expressed concern that if the cavalier attitude by government and oil company officials to communities across the Niger Delta, especially more peaceful areas such as Ogoni continues, then unwittingly the seeds of a swift and bitter return to conflict would have been sown.
The Rivers South-East Senatorial District representative, Senator Magnus Abe, during a recent church service at Bori, to seek divine intervention for the implementation of the report, lamented that government’s inaction is endangering the lives of the people.
The Senator said it was disheartening that in a democratic dispensation, government had not moved swiftly enough to address the issues raised in the report, especially the issue of water contamination.
“For the fact that we have a representative democracy, if a report by an international organisation comes out to say that your own people are exposed to this kind of danger, I expected that the government should be running around all year in search of what role to play.
The Director of Programmes at Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development (CEHRD) Shell, Stevyn Obodoekwe, said one year after the UNEP report on the effects of oil pollution in the Ogoniland, little has changed, as this latest oil spill at Bodo demonstrates.
The president of the Ogoni Solidarity Forum, Celestine AkpoBari, said it is heart-rending that for one full year after the shocking revelation in the UNEP report, almost all the Ogoni environment is contaminated, no clean up has commenced.
AkpoBari noted that irrespective of the formation of HYPREP, which he observed was never budgeted for in the 2012 appropriation, the Government and Shell are yet to demonstrate the willingness to implement UNEP Report, which should start with decommissioning.
On why it has become imperative for the government to expedite action, he said Ogoni people have experienced a terrifying new twist in their lives and environment. According to him, the fish, birds, and animals in the wild have disappeared because of oil exploration, gas flaring, and spills.
He stressed that the trees, fruits, flowers, and grasses, that gave Ogoniland a unique landscape and from which the region earned the accolade “food basket of south-eastern Nigeria” have unfortunately disappeared.
National Association of Seadogs, Rivers State chapter President, Dickens Worlu, said the group has noted the mixed reactions and concerns by many stakeholders on the seeming inaction on the part of the Federal Government and other critical stakeholders to implement this report.
Based on the UNEP report, he said it is obvious to all concerned citizens that pollution from oil and gas operations has created significant negative marks in the status of the environment in Niger Delta region.
Source: The Guardian Nigeria
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