HYPREP: A Litany of Failures And Season Of Discontent

By Dr. Godwin Uyi Ojo, Executive Director Environmental Rights Action/Friends Of The Earth Nigeria.

Introduction
This policy brief presents some civil society organizations key findings from a recent joint research and environmental field monitoring visits to Ogoni clean up sites. It aims to raise awareness on the status of the clean up process and how citizens can be involved in ways that encourages transparency and accountability in the clean up process. In particular, it is aimed to galvanize policy makers at the National Assembly to exercise its oversight functions on HYPREP and the clean up process and take more proactive steps to ensuring a proper clean up by the federal government agency called Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP).
Key findings show that the clean up process is marred by a litany of failures resulting in discontent. The process is too slow and as things stand, HYPREP procurement process will take 100 years to expend a five year budget of US$1 billion. Further, HYPREP claimed to have spent US$30.8m as at June 2020. As at 2019, US$360m was due to HYPREP while the US$200m annual funding due for 2020 is yet to be requested by them hence the need for immediate restructuring of HYPREP to deliver on proper and timely clean up.
Background
August 4, 2011 marks a turning point in the quest for Ogoniland clean up when the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) submitted a groundbreaking report to the Nigerian state, detailing its findings, conclusions, and recommendations on the environmental assessment of Ogoniland.
Since then, it has been nine years of motion without considerable movement, nine years of unfulfilled promises, high-level manipulations by Shell and the Nigerian state as well opaqueness and unaccountable operations by HYPREP. It has been nine years cluttered with a litany of failures and continuous discontent throughout Ogoni.
The conclusions above are based on detailed and continuous investigative assessment of the Ogoni cleanup process implementation since the report was first submitted to the Nigerian state in 2011. Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) has published yearly reports on different aspects of the cleanup process and has also published success indicators and Key performance indicators for use by communities, CSOs, contractors and even HYPREP itself to measure progress.
Investigative report on Ogoni clean up: no clean -up no justice
On June 18, 2020 Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria in conjunction with Amnesty International, Friends of the Earth Europe and MilieuDefensie of the Netherlands, jointly published the “NO CLEAN -UP, NO JUSTICE REPORT,” a detailed investigative assessment of the current status of the Ogoni clean up process. 17 delineated cleanup lots were visited by researchers across the four local government areas of Eleme, Tai, Gokana and Khana local government areas, respectively. It was also based on detailed performance assessment analysis of HYPREP’s operations produced by UNEP in 2019.
Following the launch of our “NO CLEAN -UP, NO JUSTICE REPORT”, HYPREP should focus on how to deliver on the proper clean up of Ogoniland rather than conducting media whitewash and newspaper advertorials falsehood that add no value to the clean up process.
After the release of our monitoring report showing the faltering cleanup process, the honorable minister of environment and HYPREP announced that the cleanup process of the secondary sites was 70% complete and that the remaining work will be completed in few months. It would be recalled that the initial 21 less complex sites were handed over to contractors in January 2019 and the cleanup was to last for 6 months. As at August 2020, no clean up site has been certified cleaned.
It is needful to reiterate our conclusions and recommendations from the No CLEAN-UP, NO JUSTICE report.
HYPREP is not designed nor structured to implement a project as complex and sizeable as the Ogoni cleanup and therefore needs restructuring to position it for a more effective clean up.
HYPREP’s procurement process is significantly flawed. Its current rate of fund disbursement will mean it will need 100 years to effectively utilize a budget that was to last an initial 5 years. HYPREP’s processes lack transparency and are not open to public scrutiny.
Work had stopped at 11 of the 17 cleanup sites researchers visited. Many of these sites stopped work in late 2019. Two sites had not even commenced work at the time of our visits except for the Information Board displayed outside their areas of operations.
There is inherent conflict of interest with the open, significant role and influence exercised by Shell Petroleum Development Corporation in charting the cleanup direction and speed. Shell is implicated in majority of the spills that had devastated Ogoniland but it has managed to entrench itself in all the oversight bodies such as the Governing Council and the Board of Trustees. It is similarly fully entrenched in the day to day operations of HYPREP project coordination office with its former staff manning key positions in HYPREP.
HYPREP is bogged down by Nigerian government bureaucracy and Shell bureaucratic bottlenecks that have seen the program unable to make progress to open the bid process for the more complex sites and there appears to be no disclosed strategy on how to move forward with this aspect of the project.
HYPREP has failed and neglected to implement the UNEP recommended emergency measures taking direct aim at further disempowering women in Ogoni who are the care givers in our communities.
Based on ERA/FoEN developed Key Performance Indicators, the environment has not been remediated and there are no beneficiaries of any livelihood improvement of the Ogonis who cry out for justice on a daily basis.
Recommendations
The Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria therefore called for:
· The immediate restructuring of HYPREP to reposition it for a more effective clean up.
· The immediate implementation of all emergency measures recommended by UNEP especially the provision of potable water, the conduct of a health audit and setting up of a health register in impacted communities,
· The enforcement of the polluter pays principle and the removal of Shell from all oversight bodies as well as the day to day management of the cleanup process,
· The establishment of Clean Up and Remediation fund of US$100 billion for the cleanup of the entire Niger Delta region and the compensation of communities and individuals directly affected by over 50 years of oil extraction,
· The certification of NOSDRA must be sought before HYPREP gives the go ahead for excavated trenches to be back filled. Currently, none of the sites that have been given permission to back fill their excavated trenches have had NOSDRA certification that they had cleaned the soil to the level in the contract they signed with HYPREP,
· An independent verification mechanism be set up to evaluate whether the remediation work by contractors meet the parameters set out in the contractual agreement with HYPREP. This has become imperative considering the claims that laboratories where samples are analyzed are either owned by contractors engaged in the cleanup and remediation process or top management of HYPREP.
· Setting up of a multi-stakeholder process to jointly define and determine success indicators and Key performance indicators for the Ogoni cleanup process to deliver on health, ecosystem protection and improved livelihoods for the Ogonis.
· The issuing of strong legislations by governments in the UK and the Netherlands, mandating companies to respect human rights and apply the same environmental standards across global operations.
Conclusion
There is apparent disquiet all over Ogoni and palpable discontent across the land. A wall of resistance is rising against the underperformance of HYPREP on a daily basis. Hence we call on the federal government to urgently restructure HYPREP because at the rate it is going, it will take them more than 100 years to complete the more complex polluted sites in Ogoni which they have not even started to address.
Without proper clean up and remediation, there can be no justice in Ogoniland.
The environment is our life, it is not for sale.