Ogoni women protest against activities of HYPREP, threaten to sue agency over inaction

Ogoni women have protested against failure of the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) to implement the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP’s) report on Ogoniland.

The women, who came from Eleme, Bodo, Kedere, Tai and Zakpor communities, among others, trooped to HYPREP’s office on Aba road, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, saying they were displeased over failure to implement the emergency measures recommended in the UNEP report despite the level of contamination in the area.

They carried placards with inscriptions: “Ogoni Women Are Suffering And Dying Of Strange Diseases; HYPREP Only Interest Is To Clean The Environment When We Die; Ogoni Women Still Drink Polluted Water; and Stop Politicising The Ogoni Cleanup,” among others.

Spokesperson of the protesters and head of the Coalition of Ogoni Women, Dr. Patience Osaroejiji, lamented that instead of carrying out the cleanup processes, HYPREP was rather militarising Ogoni communities, a situation she said, was causing serious crisis in the area.

She stressed that HYPREP’s failure to implement UNEP’s recommended emergency measures was directly and severely affecting the women.

“When signs restricting entry and use of certain lands, water bodies and wells are not posted and maintained, local women use the contaminated spaces bringing disease and death to their families. When alternative sources of potable water are not provided, women are forced to use contaminated water.

“Without a health registry and monitoring frameworks, women bear the double burden of caring for their sick loved ones and providing for their families.

“HYPREP should stop militarising Ogoni area because it was causing divisions and serious problems among the people. Also, there is poor communication between HYPREP and the Ogoni people, as the agency does not inform us about its activities because military officers are all over the place,” she stated.

She lamented that women were excluded at critical stages of developing and implementing key intervention policies in the Niger Delta region, adding that important issues to them were often ignored.

“It is a grievous omission for HYPREP not to publicly disclose a clear and coherent gender policy in tune with international best practices considering that the Ogoni cleanup would set a template for other remediation activities in the region.

“The proposed training of only 1,200 Ogoni women on livelihood activities is an insult to their sensibilities and grossly underestimates the scale and complexity of women’s needs,” she added.

Also, a gender activist, Martha Agboni, urged the agency to develop a gender policy that meets international best practices for the implementation of its cleanup in Ogoni.

Agboni advised HYPREP to take affirmative actions by ensuring that 30 per cent of employments, contracts and interventions were reserved for women and address important issues to them, insisting that they would take legal action against HYPREP if it failed to implement their demands.