Thursday 07th October marks 1000 days on from the date companies were contracted to clean-up the widespread oil spills across Ogoniland that Ken Saro-Wiwa, the Ogoni nine, and many other activists created worldwide awareness of in the 1990s.
They paid the price of this activism with their lives at the hands of the then military government of Nigeria, drawing international condemnation—and in 2011, a United Nations Environment Programmes’ (UNEP) Environmental Assessment of Ogoniland report mandated the Nigerian Government to clean up the historic oil spills in the region.
To coordinate the clean-up activities, the Federal Government of Nigeria’s Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) was established. HYPREP is now more than halfway in to the five-year period that UNEP expected initial clean-up activities would take, and is making some progress, but basic provision such as safe drinking water are still absent.
To mark this date, a new civil society monitoring initiative, led by Stakeholder Democracy Network (SDN) and the Centre for Human Rights and Development (CEHRD) is set to vastly increase the availability of information on the progress of the $1bn USD oil pollution clean-up in Ogoniland.
On Thursday 07th October, SDN and CEHRD launched a new, interactive online dashboard to allow anyone to find out exactly how the promised clean-up is progressing, as well as the first of a series of bi-annual reports. The Honourable Minister of State for Environment, Sharon Ikeazor, and the Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to Nigeria, Harry van Dijk, spoke at the online launch at 10am.
The first biannual report, which covers data to June 2021, shows that: Just over a quarter of simple clean-up sites have been certified as complete by government. Clean-up at complex sites, which will require much more intensive work than at simple sites, is yet to start – although the bidding process for contractors has started.
Information on the number of complex sites to be cleaned is yet to be released. At current pace, it is likely clean-up activities will take far longer than UNEP’s proposed five years.Physical work on infrastructure which would need to be in place to ensure complex sites can be properly decontaminated has not yet started (namely an Integrated Contaminated Soil Management Centre).
‘Emergency measures’ originally prescribed 10 years ago in the 2011 UNEP report are yet to bedelivered:While contracts have now been issued for works, all communities which were identified as having highly contaminated drinking water sources in 2011 still do not have access to improved, safe drinking water sources.Health screening to understand the health impact of pollution is yet to commence in any community.
SDN and CEHRD’s systematic monitoring works with 31 trained monitors from a network of civil society organisations to collect data on a quarterly basis. This first release of data shows that while some progress has been made, a huge amount of work is needed to accelerate clean-up activities.The report raises concerns about the quality of the clean-up, but also gives reason to hope improvements can be made.
For example: Levels of contaminants exceeding government-set thresholds were found in soil samples at two out of six sites which have been certified as complete. On the other hand, only 20 (5%) of 390 samples taken across 10 sites were found to have contaminant levels above thresholds. Surveys with 1,400 community members and focus group discussions in 12 communities found that,while in some communities there is a high level of satisfaction with HYPREP and clean-up contractors, there are multiple communities where there are very high levels of dissatisfaction, which risk derailing the clean-up if not handled properly.
The biggest concerns tend to relate to the poor quality of opportunities offered by the clean-up (e.g. low pay in clean-up jobs), and poor management of complaints and potential conflict arising from the clean-up.SDN’s Senior Project Officer, Environment Jesse-Martin Manufor stated “This report contains a wealth of valuable information for HYPREP, and we hope the discussions this generates leads to a higher quality clean-up that will benefit the Ogoni people”.
SDN’s Programmes Manager, Florence Kayemba, said “We can see some progress being made, and it’s important to recognise that. However, can anyone say it is reasonable for communities to go without safe water 10 years after this was highlighted as an emergency? This is a crisis the Ogoni people have been living with for decades. We need to work much faster, without sacrificing quality”.
The report calls on HYPREP to fast-track the provision of safe drinking water and roll out a robust health screening programme to understand and address the impacts associated with exposure to hydrocarbons. The report also recommends that a thorough certification process be followed in the certification of remediated sites.
