The suspense, anticipation and posturing that have dogged the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) report – outcome of an environmental assessment of Ogoniland – veered off its tangent on Thursday, May 22.
The new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Shell, Mr. Ben Van Burden, had disclosed on that day, that the Anglo-Dutch multinational oil company has, at last, set aside $1billion for the environmental clean-up of Ogoniland.
He then added a caveat that the fund has been kept in a “verifiable account”. Burden who made the disclosure while responding to a question asked by James Marriot of the PLATFORM during Shell’s UK shareholder’s meeting in London, on May 22, said the $1billion would remain in the “verifiable account” due to “lack of structures” through which the money will be received in Nigeria, harnessed and judiciously used to coordinate the clean-up of the environment of Ogoniland, occasioned by 30 years of oil exploration and exploitation.
Curiously, the din that has now erupted from Burden’s revelation, made two months ago, the reason Shell had chosen to deposit the $1billion in a “verifiable account” in a London bank, pending when viable structures have been erected in Nigeria to ensure that the money is specifically utilised for the clean-up of the environment, thus dwarfing the pressure by the Ogonis on the Federal Government and Shell to embark on the environmental clean-up recommended in the August 4, 2011 UNEP Report.
Before Burden’s announcement at Shell’s UK shareholder’s meeting in London, the collective demands of the Ogonis, invigorated through civil society groups and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) led by Ogonis as well as local politicians, was that the Federal Government and Shell should embark, without further delay, on the environmental clean-up of Ogoniland as recommended by the UNEP Report.
Following the spate of protest in the four Ogoni local government areas namely Tai, Khana, Gokhana and Eleme, after the execution of foremost Ogoni environmental rights advocate, Mr. Ken Saro-Wiwa, Shell Petroleum Development Company, suspended its operations in Ogoniland.
Perturbed by the increasingly hostile host community, Shell, in 2003, tacitly withdrew from Ogoniland. And the impact of the refusal of Ogonis not to allow Shell operate from its community registered negatively on Nigeria’s daily production crude oil output in the international market.
Bothered about Nigeria’s dwindling export earnings from the sale of crude oil against the backdrop of Shell’s withdrawal from Ogoniland, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, in 2003, set up a Presidential Committee on Ogoni Peace Process, with Rev. Father Matthew Hassan-Kukah, now the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, as chairman.
The aim of the committee was to reconcile the people of Ogoniland and Shell so that the Anglo-Dutch oil multinational company can resume its operations in the area without being confronted with violent agitations by the indigenes.
Having pacified the people and assured them of the sincerity of the Federal Government to get Shell to atone for its corporate infractions on its host communities, Obasanjo, in 2006, asked the United Nations to carry out an environmental assessment of Ogoniland. The assessment, which was sponsored by the government, Shell and the other oil multinationals, referred to in the report as Joint Venture Partners (JVPs), spanned a period of 14 months.
The UNEP Report submitted on August 4, 2011, indicted Shell of having compromised its social corporate responsibility. The UNEP Report stated that years of Shell’s operations in ogoniland had damaged the environment as well as devastated its ecosystem far more that was previously imagined.
The scientific assessment carried out by UNEP in Ogoniland, the first of such magnitude in Nigeria, involved the examination of more than 200 Shell operational locations; a survey of 122 kilometers of pipelines right of way and a review of over 5,000 medical records of Ogoni indigenes.
The UNEP team, which engaged over 23,000 people at local community meetings, also carried out detailed soil and groundwater investigations in 69 sites ranging in size from 1,300 square metres in Barabeedom-K in Gokhana Local Government Area to 79 hectares at Ajeokpori-Akpajo in Eleme Local Government Area.
In all, over 4,000 samples were analysed including soil extracted from 780 boreholes and water taken from 142 groundwater monitoring wells that were drilled specifically for that study. The study showed that public health in Ogoniland was threatened as drinking water in 10 Ogoni communities had been contaminated with hydrocarbons.
The UNEP Report specifically mentioned Nisisioken Ogale, a community in western Ogoniland, located close to a Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) pipeline, where families were drinking water from wells that had been contaminated with benzene – known carcinogen – at levels over 900 times above the World Health Organisation’s limit, including unquantifiable damage to aquatic life.
The UNEP scientists also discovered an 8cm layer of refined oil floating on the groundwater that serves the wells from where the Ogonis fetch their drinking water. That layer of refined oil was traced to an oil spill that occurred more than six years earlier.
The UN Under-Secretary of UNEP, Mr. Achim Steiner, who presented the report to President Goodluck Jonathan in Abuja, stated that the contamination of drinking water in Nsisioken Ogale was so severe that it warrants an emergency action “ahead of all remediation efforts.” He regretted that while “the oil industry has been a key sector of the Nigerian economy for over 50 years, many Nigerians have paid a high price” as underscored by the environmental assessment report.
Steiner said based on the findings, while some on-ground clean-up exercise could be immediate or within a span of five years, he, however, stated that “the report estimates that countering and cleaning up the pollution and catalyzing a sustainable recovery of Ogoniland could take 25 to 30 years”.
Steiner stated: “It is UNEP’s hope that the findings can break the decades of deadlock in the region and provide the foundation upon which trust can be built and action undertaken to remedy the multiple health and sustainable development issues facing people in Ogoniland. In addition it offers a blueprint for how the oil industry-and public regulatory authorities- might operate more responsibly in Africa and beyond at a time of increasing production and exploration across many parts of the Continent.”
The report, which submitted that “all sources of ongoing contamination must be brought to an end before the clean-up of the creeks, sediments and mangrove swamps can begin”, also recommended “the establishment of three new institutions in Nigeria to support a comprehensive environmental restoration exercise.”
The three institutions are, Ogoniland Environmental Restoration Authority; Environmental Restoration Fund for Ogoniland; and Integrated Contaminated Soil Management Centre. The Ogoniland Environmental Restoration Authority would oversee the implementation of the recommendations that should be set up during a Transition Phase which UNEP suggested in the Report, should begin as soon as possible.
The Environmental Restoration Authority, according to the Report, should be funded through the Environmental Restoration Fund to be set up with an initial capital injection of $1 billion contributed by the oil industry and the Federal Government, to cover the first five years of the clean-up project.
The Report further recommended that the Integrated Contaminated Soil Management Centre should be built in Ogoniland and supported by potentially hundreds of mini-treatment centres that would treat contaminated soil and provide hundreds of job opportunities.
Having severely ensured Shell’s corporate policy which the Report insisted was compromised and skewed against the environmental and health standard of Ogoni people while raking billions of dollars from its host communities called for reforms in government’s environmental regulation, monitoring and enforcement as well as improved practices in the oil industry.
As an addendum, the Report also recommended the creation of Centre of Excellence in Environmental Restoration in Ogoniland to promote learning that would also benefit other communities impacted by oil companies in the Niger Delta and elsewhere in the world.
At the presentation of the UNEP Report in Abuja on August 4, 2011, Steiner stated: “The environmental restoration of Ogoniland could prove to be the world’s most wide-ranging and long term oil clean-up exercise ever undertaken if contaminated drinking water, land, creeks and important ecosystems such as mangroves are to be brought back to full, productive health.”
Surprisingly, in July 2012, rather than establish the Ogoniland Environmental Restoration Authority (OERA) as recommended in the UNEP Report, the government set up the Hydrocarbon Pollution Restoration Project (HYPREP) to implement the environmental clean-up of Ogoniland and conduct environment assessments in other parts of Nigeria impacted by oil contamination.
The agency, which was inaugurated by the Minister of Petroleum, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, was entrusted with the task and responsibility of investigating and evaluating all hydrocarbon polluted communities and sites in Nigeria; restoration of all affected communities and sites impacted by hydrocarbon pollution in Nigeria; and the implementation of the actionable recommendations of the UNEP Environment Assessment Report on Ogoniland.
While the UNEP Report recommended that the Ogoniland Environmental Restoration Authority should be based in Ogoniland for proximity and access by government, oil companies, multilateral agencies and civil society to Ogoniland and its indigenes where the environmental clean-up exercise is expected to commence, HYPREP is domiciled in the Ministry of Petroleum in Abuja.
Even though the Director-General of the agency, Mrs. Joy Nwinee Femi-Okunu, is an indigene of Ogoni, the people felt short-changed. They argue that the UNEP Report is specifically on the environmental assessment carried out on Ogoniland and based on its independent findings recommended for the creation of an Ogoniland Environmental Restoration Authority which is different from HYPREP, an omnibus agency, according to Ogonis.
In response to the unrelenting protestations of the Ogonis, civil society and non-governmental organizations, including the acerbic criticisms of the Rivers State government on the decision by the Federal Government to establish HYPREP rather the Ogoni Environmental Restoration Authority, the federal government insisted that HYPREP was in tandem with the recommendation of the UNEP Report to set up a governance-structure to evolve operational guidelines; prepare a detailed work plan and implement necessary emergency measures that will ensure a seamless transition from when the UNEP Report was submitted to the commencement of full scale clean-up of hydrocarbon contamination in Ogoniland.
Perturbed by the discordant tunes from the Rivers State government, Ogonis and civil society groups on the one side, and the Federal Government on the other side, on the sure-footed way to implement the August 4, 2011, UNEP Report, UNEP representatives led by Special Envoy, Erik Solheim in February, 2013, visited President Goodluck Jonathan in Abuja and Governor Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi in Port Harcourt, to evolve a harmonious position regarding the implementation of the environmental remediation proposed in the UNEP Report on the Environmental Assessment of Ogoniland.
Apart from the establishment of HYPREP to coordinate the transition of the UNEP Report pending the actual physical clean-up of Ogoniland, nothing happened. A vexed Amaechi, on January, 25 in Bori, at the inauguration of the local government executives of the Save Rivers Movement (SRM), in Khana Local Government Area, enjoined Ogonis to fast and pray for the Federal Government to release $1billion out of the $49.8 billion the former Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, alleged was missing from NNPC accounts.
Amaechi queried: “The UNEP Report said spend $1 billion. Without the UNEP Report, you cannot fish; you cannot farm. Have you seen one billion dollars?” Let them bring one billion dollars from the $49.8 billion that is missing so that we can clean-up Ogoniland.” Continue reading…
