…..As Stakeholders Question Integrity Of Process
Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre(CISLAC) with support from CORDAID on Thursday 10 October,2019 held a Civil Society Parliament interactive session on the Governance frame work of the cleanup of Ogoni in Rivers State Nigeria with a view to addressing the identified challenges.
In his opening remarks, Kentebe Ebiaridor , said the cleanup process by Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) seems to be more of controversy as people look at it at different perspective. Some believe that nothing is happening while some believe that the cleanup will work, Mr Ebiaridor revealed.
Sanuldeen Hashim,Programme Manager of CISLAC in an interview with Journalists on the sideline of the event, said ‘we are here as a parliament to discuss Governance frame work of cleanup process and that is because we have noticed some gaps in the mechanism which state actors deployed in selecting of contractors and how the contractors have interfaced with the community’.
The Programme Manager of CISLAC explained that some of the gaps are recipe for conflicts because the way things are going are the moment, there seems to be a whole lot of challenge in terms of perception and how people view the entire cleanup process.
He said ‘the interactive session is aimed at establishing the key gaps in the cleanup process and to put up advisory roles to HYPREP’.
Mr.Hashim said ‘what we have also done is to set up an independent monitoring frame work to be able to put side by side a score card that provides some kind of feedback on how HYPREP has performed in the last few years,what is currently on ground and of course what the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP ) report has recommended.
Mr Hashim further said ‘there are areas where HYPREP have are not performed effectively and little areas where they have shown eminent responsiveness but overall performance seems to be below average and we are thinking that this sought of continuous engagement will provide an opportunity to improve on areas where it is believed the gap exist’.
On his part the President of National Youth Council of Ogoni People (NYCOP) ,Dr. Young Nkpah alleged that HYPREP is a scam. He said ‘there is high dose of politics in the whole process and except we remove the political hands, we cannot not get anything right because everything will be geared towards political patronage and that is what is affecting Ogoni cleanup’.
He also alleged that everything is keyed towards siphoning the money that will be given by multinationals for the cleanup process.
Another stakeholder Dr(Mrs) Patience Osaroejiji criticized HYPREP for alleged non –inclusion of women in the process of cleanup.
Dr.Osaroejiji said ‘HYPREP initially told them that 1,200 women will be trained in the four local Government areas of Ogoni, which the women disagreed with them, now they said they will train only 400 women for livelihood in the four LGAs’.
She stated that the number HYPREP is proposing is very small .The opinion leader urged HYPREP to ensure involvement of more women in the process.
Another stakeholder, Sebastian Kpalap noted that the current cleanup process by HYPREP is designed to fail as there is no strict adherence to the template set up by UNEP.
Other stakeholder who spoke during the interactive session revealed that there was no transparency in the bidding process and many of the companies awarded contracts in the cleanup process lacks the technical ability and has nothing to do with cleanup process in their areas of operation.
The highlights of the interactive session was division of the participants into three different groups with aim of developing accountability gap in implementation process of the cleanup with focus on HYPREP, contractors and other external or internal stakeholders.
Our correspondent reports that the group after identification of some key gaps also proffered possible solutions to the gaps.
The event had in attendance Civil Society actors, women, community leaders among others.
