The Federal Government on Thursday said the Ogoniland clean-up project implementation office has commenced
emergency interventions as recommended by the United Nations Environmental
Programme (UNEP) report.
HYPREP National Coordinator, Dr.
Marvin Dekil, in an interview in Abuja said the process
for emergency provision of needed infrastructure such as drinkable water,
building medical registry have commenced, while engagement with traditional
rulers and sensitization of youth representatives are on-going.
The report which was submitted to
the Federal Government in 2011 recommended swift interventions ahead of the
actual clean-up exercise, considering the level of water and soil pollution
witnessed in the Niger Delta region.
According to Dekil, youths in the
region are being trained to help determine level of pollution in the affected
communities.
He said other youths and women would
be trained and empowered in partnership with local and international
organizations.
He said, though there were demands
from the polluted communities and other stakeholders to hasten the clean-up process
but the remediation exercise, he noted cannot be rushed but needed holistic
approach.
“We have setup a team that went into
the communities and did assessment of the water facilities. We now have data on
state of the facilities and we have gone beyond to advertise for water
engineers and consultants with the intention of rehabilitating existing
facilities and designing a more permanent water options for the communities.
“That advert is out and we have also
advertised for health impact experts. It is part of the report in the emergency
measure to do health impact study of the population. That advert too is out.
Another activity we are planning now is the update of the UNEP report,” Dekil
said.
Dekil, who said he was appointed in
January but assumed office in March, 2017 added that the report released in
2011 needed reassessment due to the period it took for actual implementation of
the project - 2017.
He emphasized need to reconcile the
difference such as the contamination data on the polluted sites in relation to
what is currently at stake. “We have also advertised for consultants and
relevant companies to help us with that,” he said.
The urgent action recommended by
UNEP includes: provision of adequate sources of drinking water to the affected
households; building a medical registry to assess the population who had been
drinking the highly contaminated water, record and do follow-up on their health
status as well as initiating survey on all drinking water wells around the
impacted sites.
Speaking further, he said the
inauguration by the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osibanjo commenced the process
to the Ogoni clean-up.
Dekil explained that the process
continued with the inauguration of Governing Councils and Board of Trustees
(BoT), as well as the recruitment process which brought him onboard as the
national coordinator.
Reacting to rationale behind the
inclusion of Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) as board HYPREP board
member, he said: “It was important that all the stakeholders were on the table
talking. Nobody goes home to say that when you decided this, I wasn’t there and
this includes the communities, International Oil Companies (IOCs), government
and civil societies. That is the reason SPDC is part of the board.
“They are not represented as SPDC
but as IOCs. So the project is designed such that it will be replicated. Like I
told you, the mandate is across the entire Niger Delta region and rest of the
country. So we have to build a model that we could replicate. When we leave
Ogoni and go to other areas, that model will still work.”
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