THE United Nations on Thursday declared that the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project that was established in 2012 for the clean-up of Ogoniland in Niger Delta, crashed due to a lack of transparency and accountability in the project.
It disclosed this in Abuja at the maiden retreat for the governing structures of a revamped HYPREP comprising the Governing Council, Board of Trustees, Project Coordination Office, as well as the Central Representative Advisory Committee.
The Technical Adviser, United Nations Environment Programme, the body that produced the report for Ogoni clean-up, Mike Cowing, said the Federal Government must learn from the crash of the first HYPREP programme.
He said, “It has been a very long journey to where we’ve reached today. My colleagues and myself were first engaged in this process in 2007 after the request of the then President of Nigeria.
“We actually commenced work on environmental assessment in 2009. It took two years to land it, to get the agreements and funding in place. And after two years of scientific investigation, we tabled the Ogoniland report in 2011.
“The following year, 2012, the first HYPREP was established. UNEP disengaged in 2011 because we are only here at the invitation of the government and it wasn’t seen at the time that there was a need to have UNEP involved.”
Cowing added, “We actually didn’t engage until 2019 when we were invited to come back. So I think the most important thing is to have learnt the lessons of the past. The first HYPREP crashed and burnt and we need to understand why.
“There was a lack of transparency and accountability and sadly it failed. We are onto HYPREP-2 and we making incremental improvements.”
Cowing, however, pledged the readiness of UNEP to support and actualise the mandate of HYPREP.
“We have to continue to improve on HYPREP. So, see today’s event as something of a watershed, because it is the first time that the four organs of HYPREP have sat together in the same room. We aim to have a common vision on the goal of HYPREP and how to achieve its mandate,” he stated.
After officially introducing the newly appointed Coordinator for HYPREP, Ferdinand Gaidom, to stakeholders at the event, the Minister of State for Environment, Chief Sharon Ikeazor, charged the new boss of the project to return the organisation on track.
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