ERA tasks NASS on oversight visits to Ogoniland clean up sites

The Environmental Rights Action/ Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN), has advised the National Assembly to conduct oversight visits to Ogoniland cleanup sites to ascertain the real state of the exercise.

In the same vein, the group has also called for the removal of Prof Philip Shekwolo as the Acting Project Coordinator of the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP), insisting that being a senior member of Shell, Shekwolo should have no place in the HYPREP managing the cleanup of Ogoniland pollution earlier caused by Shell.

ERA had called for Prof. Shekwolo sack as contained in their recommendations titled, “No cleanup, no justice: a decade of failure?

The group revealed that Prof. Shekwolo was the Head of the Shell team charged with the cleanup and remediation programme for over 15 years, saying “many of the sites being cleaned today had supposedly been cleaned under the supervision of Prof. Shekwolo.”

Buttressing this point, the Executive Director of ERA, Dr Godwin Uyi Ojo, said “the implications of Prof. Shekwolo taking over as Acting Project Coordinator of HYPREP is an indication that Shell is in control of the Ogoni cleanup and the possibilities are there that he will run the cleanup, in the same manner, it has always carried out the cleanup exercise in the Niger Delta region”.

He also called for the removal of Prof. Shekwolo from HYPREP as well as Shell from the Governing Council, Board of Trustees and the project coordinating office.

Similarly, the environment organization frowned at the inclusion of politicians in the recently reconstituted Governing Council and the Board of Trustees of HYPREP

According to ERA, “the recently reconstituted Governing Council and the Board of Trustees of HYPREP is peopled by politicians expressing a sense of political patronage. The cleanup process should not be used as an opportunity to provide jobs for the boys or party loyalists.

“The organisation has also called on the Nigerian state to keep politicians far away from the cleanup process and allow the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and other capable individuals to manage the Ogoni cleanup process to ensure it does not fail.”

ERA in its six-point recommendations in the policy brief report stated that the cleanup of Ogoniland is a multi-disciplinary scientific process geared towards restoring the devastated Ogoni environment and setting the template for the cleanup of the entire Niger Delta region after over six decades of commercial oil production and the making of hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue.