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From TONY JOHN, Port Harcourt
Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), has advised the newly appointment Project Coordinator (PC) of Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP), Professor Nenniibarini Zabbey, of the rot in the agency.
President Muhammadu Buhari has recently sacked the former PC, Ferdinand Giadom, and replaced him with his kinsman, Zabbey, from Bodo community in Gokana Local Government Area of Rivers State who is the fourth Project Coordinator since seven years of the establishment of HYREP (2016 to 2023).
MOSOP President, Prince Biira, who spoke in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, on Friday, said the appointment of PC, HYPREP, is statutorily for four years, adding that the series of removals and replacements showed the level of rot in the agency.
He said: “As you may know, HYPREP has existed for seven years now (2016-2023). Within this period, it has had four (4) project coordinators, namely, Dr. Marvin Dekil, Professor Philip Shokwolo, Dr. Ferdinand Giadom and now, Professor Nenniibarini Zabbey.
“Statutorily, a HYPREP project coordinator is authorized to stay in office for four (4) years. But, the frequency of removals and replacements, tells of obvious rot including indisputable managerial ineptness and dissatisfaction in the commission.
MOSOP, however, commended President Buhari for the appointment of Professor Zabbey, adding that the Minister of Environment should equally be shown the exit way like the immediate past PC, Giadom.
MOSOP president charged the new PC to be impactful with his wealth of knowledge and bring a new change to the agency.
Biira said: “With his pedigree as a sound manager; experienced and upright environmental justice campaigner, we have no doubt in our minds that he will efficiently deliver on his mandate. Hence, we pledge to support and cooperate with him in the efforts at restoring the degraded Ogoni environment and ecology.
“However, MOSOP expects no less than an impactful, refreshing dawn in the management of HYPREP and the Ogoni environmental remediation and restoration exercise.
“While commending Mr. President’s action, we consider the removal of the former PC without also sacking the Minister of Environment and Chairman, HYPREP Governing Council (GC), Mohammed Abdullahi, and other key officials of the Project Coordinating Office (PCO), as not only unfair but also a disappointing act of window dressing that would not enhance needed reform, which outcome would improve the saddening state of the project.
MOSOP said that information available to it suggests that the environment minister was not irreproachable of the mess including corruption bedeviling the intervention.
He said: “Therefore, for any transformative approach to make meaning, it has to be total in order to do away with the main actors and their influences.
“Evidently, the new PC will be inheriting the challenges of a polluted office. To reposition the intervention, it is our view, that he recognizes the essence of carrying out necessary internal reforms notwithstanding whose ox may be gored.
“Some key weaknesses of HYPREP have been traced to lack of transparency and accountability and over indulgence in dishonest undertakings. It is, therefore, important that these impediments are removed to salvage the debilitating situation.
“Without over emphasizing, HYPREP is an essential agency, which operational faults ceaselessly generates genuine concerns.
“It will be recalled that MOSOP had persistently cried aloud that HYPREP stinks of sleaze. Billions of naira had been invested although allegedly, in so-called provision of alternative drinking water in Ogoni in line with UNEP prescription as emergency action following the internecine state of water in the area.”
The pan-Ogoni group observed that seven years down the line, Ogoni people still lack alternative drinking water.
“Yet, funds involved have remained unaccounted for. To us, until thorough and comprehensive investigation and overhaul are effected in HYPREP, achieving its mandate will remain elusive or a mirage.
“From the Governing Council to the Board of Trustees down to the Project Coordinating Office, the overriding interest as of fact, is criminal inclination to making money through fraudulent means and at the expense of the project. Hence, HYPREP has become a cash cow, sucked dry by a gaggle of powerful government functionaries, national parliamentarians and other influential politicians, HYPREP officials and their cronies.”
Biira said that rather than concentrate on its obligations, HYPREP has been noted for dispensing patronages to the highlighted scoundrels, which implication is the weak foundation that restoration of the Ogoni environment cannot be built upon.
“MOSOP wishes to aver albeit regrettably that HYPREP in the seven (7) years of its existence failed to live up to its responsibilities.
“Under the watch of the environment minister, the outgone PC and other lieutenants, the agency transformed to a platform for the sponsorship of unremitting litigations against the commission, which culminated into arranged, out of court settlements resulting to awarding juicy contracts to the underwritten litigants, out of which the HYPREP sponsors receive mouthwatering kick-backs.
“It also resorted to silencing vocal organisations of the people especially MOSOP, through sponsorship of division in the Movement to weaken its cohesion and check on the activities of the agency. It further denied MOSOP membership of the GC to strengthen this appalling resolve while unserious about delivering on its commitments.
According to MOSOP, prior to their appointments, HYPREP failed to meet the standards of the Environmental Guidelines and Standards for the Petroleum Industry in Nigeria (EGASPIN) that stipulates that TARGET VALUES (50mg/kg) for Total Petroleum Hydrocarbon (TPH) for the remediation of contaminated soils.
“These values were re-echoed in the UNEP report. It is sad to state that HYPREP arbitrarily created its own standards (1000mg/kg) in gross violation of the EGASPIN statute. Thus, the bulk of the lots (simple sites) presented by HYPREP as completely remediated has contaminants persisting in concentrations far above the Target Values prescribed by law yet HYPREP Closed Out the sites claiming to have effectively remediated them.
“Unfortunately, the referenced authorities deliberately refused to reverse the situation. This goes to suggest that the agency had no intention of complying with the extant law because of pecuniary considerations.”
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MOSOP president continued: “If HYPREP had not been able to remediate the simple sites to acceptable standard, or meet up requirements for Close Out of even the simple sites, how can it accomplish that of semi-complex, impacted sites, which it has already awarded contracts and the contractors mobilized; and the complex sites (shore line) for which it has called for bidding?
“This suggests that the commanding team and their collaborators favoured making money over and above the business of restoring the Ogoni ecosystem to revive dislocated livelihood resources on which the people depend.
“Most of the contractors that worked on the contaminated simple sites hadinade-
quate remediation technologies, no prior experience and very poor workmanship amidst a myriad of gross incompetence. This is also the case with contractors for the semi-complex lots.
“Our experience relating to work at the said simple lots, evidenced that HYPREP’s supervision of the works had been nothing to be desired. The agency’s site supervisors were seldom on site, report late and leave early; thereby enhancing shoddy and poor performance from the contractors.
“Therefore, for the myriad of HYPREP’s woes to be resolved, we urge Mr. President to intervene by instituting a high powered investigation into the activities of the agency and culprits handed over to the police and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for prosecution.”
