The Project Coordinator of Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP), Dr Marvin Dekil, has said that the ongoing clean-up of oil spill impacted sites in Ogoniland in Rivers State has nothing to do with politics.
He said that the commencement of the exercise at a time when the general elections are fast approaching is a mere coincidence.
Dekil gave this clarification while giving an update of HYPREP’s activities to newsmen in Port Harcourt last Saturday. He said that the clean-up exercise was never a political jamboree as insinuated in certain quarters but a genuine commitment to clean-up the heavily polluted Ogoniland in accordance with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Report.
According to him, the commencement of remediation work at some impacted sites in the four Ogoni-speaking local government areas of Rivers State marked the beginning of the clean-up of impacted sites in the entire Niger Delta region.
He disclosed that 16 contractors who passed through a rigorous procurement process had so far been introduced and handed over 16 slots and sites out of the 21 contractors and companies which successfully won the contracts for the clean-up exercise, adding that the agency had divided the impacted sites into three broad categories, namely, category A, complex, category B-less complex and category C- sites that require further investigations.
“The work of remediation in less complex sites does not require utilisation of Integrated Contaminated Social Management Centre (ICSMC). We have since commenced feasibility studies for both (ICSMC ) and Centre of Excellence. We are adopting an international bidding process to get the best of expertise and technology for the construction of both facilities,” he said.
Dekil further hinted that the handover of sites for clean-up to contractors was generally successful as work was currently going on at those sites but regretted what he described as an isolated criminal case in K-Dere Community in Gokana Local Government Area last Tuesday where the agency’s bus was set ablaze through a petrol bomb, insisting that the police were on the trail of the perpetrators of the act.
“The HYPREP team was never attacked and neither were they prevented from carrying out their duties,” he said, assuring that security measures had been put in place to forestall future occurrence.
He said HYPREP was not shutting out indigenous contractors from the clean-up exercise, stressing that some of them would soon be part of the exercise, even as he stated that the agency was building the capacity of the local people to benefit maximally from the project.
Dekil said the body was interfacing with Ogoni leaders and youths under the aegis of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP) and the National Youth Council of Ogoni People (NYCOP) to ensure that the clean-up project was successfully delivered without many hiccups.
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