Visiting Ogoniland last week after my first visit in 1996 was a bittersweet experience. It was like traversing two worlds in less than three decades. Unbelievable! I went to Ogoni for the first time to chronicle the mess oil industry and the Nigerian state had made of Ogoniland.
Before oil was discovered in the Ogoni community of K-Dere, popularly called the Bomu oil fields, the territory made up of six kingdoms – Babbe, Eleme, Gokana, Ken-Khana, Nyo-Khana, and Tai – and now compressed into four local governments: Eleme, Gokana, Khana, and Tai, which covers approximately 1,000 square kilometers, with a population of about 832,000, according to 2006 census, was an agricultural and fishing society.
But all that changed with the coming of Bomu oil well 1 in 1958. Subsequently, Shell made more discoveries in other Ogoni communities, including Ebubu, Yorla, Bodo West and Korokoro, leading to the building of massive oil infrastructure, with crude oil pipelines crisscrossing the entire land. When the oil started spilling, nothing was done to mitigate the looming danger until it became a catastrophe. An environmental assessment conducted by the United Nations Environment Programme, UNEP, documented over 2,976 oil spills between 1976 and 1991. Consequentially, decades of unchecked spills and unmitigated gas flaring, which contaminated land, water and air, impacting the health and livelihoods of the people, turned what was hitherto the world’s third-largest mangrove ecosystem into an environmental disaster zone.
Faced with an existential threat, the people came up with the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People, MOSOP, a non-governmental organisation with the mandate to campaign non-violently to promote democratic awareness and protect Ogoni environment, vesting themselves with the Ogoni Bill of Rights in November 1990.
Tragically, barely four years thence, a split in the ranks of its leadership turned MOSOP into a movement for the death of Ogoni people, with the gruesome murder by an irate mob, on May 21, 1994, of Albert Badey, Edward Kobani, Theophilus Orage and Samuel Orage, in Giokoo community, Gokana. More Ogoni blood subsequently flowed when the ruling military junta blamed Ken Saro-Wiwa, a social rights activist, and eight of his compatriots for the killings. Tried and convicted, Saro-Wiwa, Saturday Dobee, Nordu Eawo, Daniel Gbooko, Paul Levera, Felix Nuate, Baribor Bera, Barinem Kiobel, and John Kpuine, were executed on November 10, 1995, in Port Harcourt.
So, the Ogoni I visited in 1996 was a community under siege, occupied by the Nigerian military, with the people distraught, melancholic and forlorn. They walked about, their heads bowed in utter defeat and surrender.
That was until 2008, when at the behest of the Nigerian government, the United Nations Environment Programme, UNEP, conducted an independent assessment of the environment and public health impacts of oil contamination in Ogoniland. Over a 14-month period, with over 4,000 samples collected for analysis from more than 200 sites, 122 kilometres of pipeline rights of way surveyed, more than 5,000 medical records reviewed and engagement of over 23,000 people at local community meetings, UNEP’s independent scientific assessment finding was damning: Ogoniland had become a wasteland, which, unless immediate remediation steps were taken, may well become the world’s worst ecological disaster.
The report, which was first published in 2011 indicated that pollution from over 50 years of oil operations in Ogoniland had penetrated further and deeper than many had thought. But nothing was done until the Federal Ministry of Environment in a 2016 Gazette, established the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project, HYPREP, to undertake environmental restoration in Ogoni, building on the 2011 UNEP report. This environmental restoration is turning out to be one of the world’s most wide-ranging and long-term oil clean-up exercise given the fact that contaminated drinking water, land, creeks and important ecosystems such as mangroves are being systematically brought back to full, productive health.
With the dual mandate of remediating hydrocarbon impacted communities and restoring livelihoods in Ogoniland, HYPREP has done an incredible job. It is to the HYPREP restored Ogoni community that I returned to last week. And it was a soul-lifting experience. Contrasted with the 1996 experience, Ogoni is a land on the cusp of renaissance. The air was fresh, the vegetation was greener, the rivers had palpable aquatic life and the people no longer walked about with their heads bowed. They rather had a spring in their step.
And the reason is simple. As Prof Nenibarini Zabbey, the project coordinator, said: “HYPREP has achieved significant milestones,” working endlessly to address the devastation caused by oil spills, gas flaring and other pollutants in the area.
Besides, beyond the core value of remediation, HYPREP is adding electricity, healthcare delivery services and potable water facilities to spur economic activities. “What we are doing is a sustainable clean-up project and we are in conformity with the original mandate of UNEP while we are also adding values,” he said.
The projects are breathtaking. For instance, at one of its 39 medium risk sites for soil and groundwater remediation at Ajen-Okpori, Eleme, Israel Sigalo, the team lead, remediation execution, environmental remediation unit of HYPREP, explained the incredible remediation processes and techniques. So far, 48 lots have been completed and certified by the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, NOSDRA, in the first and second phases of the project, while 39 medium risk lots are ongoing.
Yet, it was another experience at Goi and Kpor, Gokana, where two of the 34 lots for the ongoing shoreline cleanup, witnessed active remediation activities. Peter Lenu, technical adviser to the project coordinator on shoreline cleanup explained how low-pressure active flushing of the sediments was deployed in removing hydrocarbon residue.
In Bomu, the host community for the mangrove project, well over 1.5 million mangrove seedlings have already been planted in HYPREP’s effort to recover 560 hectares of lost mangrove areas. Four million seedlings will be planted in the first phase of the project while a total 10 million seedlings will be planted over the restoration period, which holds significant benefit for restoration of ecosystem goods and services, fish production, climate change mitigation and adaptation. A sight of the healthy mangrove seedlings sprouting on the tidal flats of Bomu, was, in itself, rejuvenating.
But going beyond its core mandate, HYPREP has embarked on massive water project with water schemes in Alesa, Ebubu, Korokoro, Barako, Terabor, Kpean, Bomu, Kporghor, already completed. In the healthcare, a specialist hospital, with an oncology department as special feature, is nearing completion in Kpite Tai, as well as Buan cottage hospital in Ken-Khana. Besides, primary health centres in Bori, Terabor, Nchia and Kpite, are being strengthened, while health outreaches benefitting over 10,000 Ogonis are carried out. Moreover, the Ogoni health impact study, as recommended by the UNEP report of 2011, will be conducted by the World Health Organisation, WHO, this first quarter.
But it is in the area of livelihoods where 5,000 Ogoni women and youths trained in 20 skill sets and graduated with starter packs that the most intangible impacts are being made. There has also been training for 200 farmers, aviation training for 30 youths, 60 SMEs entrepreneurs empowered with N300,000 each, 40 Nano businesses empowered with N100,000 each, education support of N250,000 paid to 200 final year students and award of N200 million scholarship to 300 Ogoni post-graduate students (200 Masters and 100 Doctoral). Specialised skills training is billed to commence in mechatronics, seafaring and creative arts.
The sheer scale of the project is mindboggling. But what is even more astounding is the fact that most of the young men and women executing these highly technical jobs are Ogoni people. And to ensure sustainability, HYPREP is also building the Centre of Excellence for Environmental Restoration, CEER, a project Prof Zabbey described as “a monumental step forward in the remediation of hydrocarbon pollution in Ogoni and beyond.”
And in compliance with Federal Government’s directive that HYPREP should contribute to national food security, Prof. Zabbey announced an expansion of the Centre’s original remediation-related laboratories to include biotechnology, which he explained, will enhance phytoremediation studies and crop improvement research to contribute to national food security and sovereignty.
“We have never had it so good,” crowed Gideon Nwielaghi, an indigene Khana. “I never believed I would witness the restoration of Ogoniland in my lifetime.” He is not alone as that seems to be the singsong in the hitherto despoiled Ogoniland as HYPREP carries out its restoration magic.
The post Cleaning up Ogoniland, the HYPREP way, by Ikechukwu Amaechi appeared first on Vanguard News.
