The Tour
Media Voices
IMPRESSIONS FROM TOUR OF OGONI CLEANUP
The ongoing Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) in Ogoniland is fast changing the narrative via efforts aimed at the transformation of the degraded environment. What is core in this effort is the people-centric character of the endeavour. There is so much that is being done in the restoration of means of livelihood and occupational interests in farming and fishing. The focus on potable water, building of hospitals and a university and research centre devoted to environmental studies attest to the deliberate consolidation of human capital development. The Project Coordinator and his team have demonstrated capacity and passion needed for the execution of the project. What HYPREP needs henceforth include more critical engagement with the public, governments at all levels, intensification of awareness drive and programme that will guarantee the sustainability of the new lease of life when HYPREP runs its course.
Sunny Awhefeada
Columnist, Writer, University Teacher - Daily Independent Newspaper .
An Account of My Visit to Ogoniland
INSIGHTS INTO OGONI CLEANUP
My participation in a tour of remediation projects addressing the negative impact of oil-producing activities in Ogoni, Rivers State, was an eye-opening experience.
At the centre of the remediation efforts is the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP), established by the Nigerian government in 2012 following the recommendations of a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report on oil contamination in Ogoniland.
The tour, which involved seasoned journalists, showed the need for a narrative change. There was strong evidence of HYPREP's focused improvement of impacted communities as well as its commitment to sustainable development in the targeted areas.
The beauty of HYPREP is its value additions beyond implementing the UNEP report.
For instance, we visited the Kporghor/Gio and Barako water schemes, which boast modern water treatment facilities that provide potable water to communities.
We also visited the 100-bed Ogoni specialist hospital and the 40-bed Buan cottage hospital, which are under construction.
The high point of the tour was the visit to the grand and ambitious Centre of Excellence for Environmental Restoration, which is in the last phase of completion. It
stands on 28 hectares of land. Designed as an international research centre for environmental issues, it is a statement on continuity of environmental intervention. These project sites provided valuable insights into HYPREP's impressive and commendable efforts on the first day of the tour, March 10, 2025.
Femi Maculey
Nation Newspaper .
Writer ,Journalist and Columnist
Ogoni Clean up, the HYPREP magic
The perception for too long was that nothing was happening, that all the talk about Ogoni Clean up was government propaganda.
That, unfortunately, is not the reality. The reality which this trip has starkly brought to the fore is that the highly polluted and degraded Ogoni environment, fora and fauna are being gradually, albeit remediated and restored.
The work is massive and heartwarming.
Even more heartwarming is the fact that beyond the massive remediation work, HYPREP is going beyond its call of duty by restoring the livelihoods of the Ogoni people.
We saw a specialist hospital under construction, cottage hospitals, and water projects.
Then, the human capacity building component of the project is awesome.
It was an eye-opener.
HYPREP was also spot on in organising a seamless tour.
I am looking forward to seeing more as the tour progresses.
Thanks,
Ikechukwu Amaechi
Ogoni Clean-up: A ruse turned reality
Life is back in Ogoniland! This is the reality on ground. No thanks to the efforts of the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP), which has shown uncommon willpower that government agencies can live to their billings with determination.
The remediation works ongoing in Ogoniland to address the pain of the people occasioned by pollution and other environmental damages by oil exploration activities in the locality, are pointers to the fact that life could become abundant in the area again.
The day two of the tour of the HYPREP remediation sites opened one's eyes to the level of devastations visited on the agrarian community by the various oil companies that had operated in Ogoniland in the last 60 years!
But it is heartwarming to note that gradually, life is returning to Ogoniland revegetation is taking and aquatic habitats are being restored.
The massive excavation sites geared towards removing the contamination in the soil and groundwater are encouraging. One can boast that the Ogoni Clean-up project has gone beyond political sloganeering and has now become a reality.
I am particularly delighted that HYPREP is also focusing on reforestation of the ancient Ogoni mangroves. Though I couldn't follow the team on the voyage to the big sites for the mangrove replanting, the few sites by the banks of the Ogoni River are enough testimonials that aquatic elements and avian species would soon return to their natural habitats p. The simple implication of this is that the locals would soon have their delicacies and means of livelihood back!
More delightful is the engagement of the locals in the projects. The sense of belonging, relevance and ownership given to the Ogoni rural dwellers cannot be quantified. This is the physical manifestation of light at the end of the tunnel!
As the tour ended, the biggest message for me is that the late environmentalists, Ken Saro-Wiwa, and his fellow Ogoni patriots who were murdered by the State in the wake of the Ogoni crisis did not die in vain.
The Ogoni people, nay, the entire Nigerian people, owe it a duty to sustain the efforts of HYPREP in Ogoniland by building a solid wall of protection around the facilities deployed to redress the injustices of the past six decades. HYPREP on its own must not drop the ball!
'Suyi Ayodele;
Nigerian Tribune
Journey through “reborn” Ogoniland
Thirty years ago, the Ogoni people’s struggle finally pierced through the iron curtain of the international community’s attention. It took the spilling of blood and emasculation of the Ogoni elite for the world to take note.
In April 1994, I had the privilege of encountering foremost author and Ogoni activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa, at a seminar in Enugu aimed at fashioning a common Igbo position as the nation prepared for the National Constitutional Conference, NCC, empanelled by General Sani Abacha. Saro-Wiwa was a guest speaker. The event offered him and former Biafra leader, Chief Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the opportunity to “reconcile” after playing historical roles in opposite sides of the Nigerian Civil War.
That was virtually Saro-Wiwa’s final public outing. A few days later, mayhem exploded in Ogoniland. Four prominent Ogoni leaders, known as the Ogoni Four – Albert Badey, Edward Kobani, Theophilus Orage and Samuel Orage – were gruesomely murdered. Their corpses were never found. Saro-Wiwa and eight other leaders of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People, MOSOP, were arrested, summarily tried and hanged for the alleged incitement that led to the lynching of the Ogoni Four.
The Ogoni elite had been torn into two mutually destructive camps. The Ogoni Four were accused of “compromising” the struggle by being soft on the Federal Government and Shell, the oil company responsible for the environmental devastation of Ogoniland. On the other hand, the Ogoni Nine were perceived to have precipitated the killing of their counterparts. The Abacha government ignored all entreaties to spare the lives of Saro-Wiwa and his colleagues.
These sad events placed the Ogoni struggle on the agenda of the United Nations which became gravely concerned over severe environmental pollution of Ogoniland after over 50 years of irresponsible oil exploitation. In 2006, the United Nations Environmental Programme, UNEP, sent experts to investigate the environmental disaster in Ogoniland and submit a report that would guide remediation. In 2011, the UNEP Report was submitted to President Goodluck Jonathan.
It was not until April 2022 when the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project, HYPREP, was created that the “Ogoni clean-up” programme concretely began. Because of the prolonged period of lip service paid to the project, many Nigerians, including major media stakeholders, never knew the amount of world class action going on under the leadership of Professor Nenibarini Zabbey at HYPREP’s Project Office in Port Harcourt. Indeed, when I sent a Facebook post from one of the shoreline reclamation project sites in Goi, Gokana LGA, people were pleasantly surprised that the clean-up was real and not mere propaganda.
We had two days of intensive tour of all four local government areas of Ogoniland – Tai, Eleme, Khana and Gokana. We visited the HYPREP regional water scheme at Kpoghor. About 30 communities whose water resources were polluted now enjoy potable water piped to them from these waterworks. In Ajen Okpori and Ogale in Eleme, we witnessed how the polluted soil and underground water were excavated and cleaned by experts, and land restored for normal human activity. Soil and underground water purification are going on simultaneously in 39 communities across Ogoniland.
The most eye-catching and obviously largest of the HYPREP projects is at Wiiyaakara in Khana LGA. The Centre of Excellence and Environmental Remediation, CEER, under construction by the China’s CCECC, is much like an international university town, complete with its research faculty buildings, residential zone, solar farm, sports complex and massive laboratories. It will incubate experts in all aspects of practical environmental science from all parts of the world.
By far the most exciting adventure for us was the visit to Goi in Gokana LGA. It is a shoreline community where technicians were labouring with machines to suck out spilled oil sludge from the muddy soil of the shoreline. The experts said the presence of live periwinkles in the mud meant the shoreline restoration was beginning to work. Shoreline restoration is taking place in five communities throughout Ogoniland.
We took a 45-minute boat ride to Bomu, also in Gokana LGA, where mangrove trees were being replanted after soil restoration. Each of us had the privilege to plant a mangrove tree! In a few years when the trees have matured, the mangrove ecosystem will hopefully be fully restored, provided that the HYPREP activities are sustained and re-pollution prevented. According to HYPREP officials, the Ogoni clean-up is just the first step towards the extension of same to all parts of the Niger Delta and beyond.
Ogoni people and Ogoniland are harvesting the benefits of their struggle. Ogoni has become a pacesetter in many ways. Other Niger Delta agitators sprang up due to the attention the Ogoni struggle elicited from all over the world. The Ogoni clean-up is being conducted mainly with the expertise and manpower of Ogoni indigenes. The Centre of Excellence will draw experts from all over the world. Even after the clean-up, the knowledge, expertise and experience that the Ogoni men and women are accumulating will be exported to service polluted communities throughout Nigeria and beyond.
HYPREP has trained 2,500 Ogoni youth with International Maritime Organisation, IMO, Levels 1 and 2 certification in shoreline clean-up and mangrove restoration, which they are freely deploying to make a living.
There is a saying: “No pain, no gain”. The Ogoni struggle attracted a scorched-earth military pacification mission on the people. The names of Abacha’s hit men, Major General Obi Umahi and Brigadier General Paul Okuntimo, will remain indelible in Ogoni history. They lost their best, the Ogoni Four and Ogoni Nine. But today, Ogoniland occupies a place of pride in all Niger Delta because of dividends that the HYPREP projects are bringing on the people and their ancestral land.
Where would the Ogoni people be today without the Ogoni struggle?
Ochereome Nnanna;
Chairman Editorial Board, Vanguard Newspaper and Columnist
As HYPREP restores the glory of Ogoniland
Visiting Ogoniland last week after my first visit in 1996 was a bittersweet experience. The difference between then and now is unbelievable! I went to Ogoni the first time to chronicle the mess oil industry and the Nigerian state had made of the place.
Before oil was discovered in K-Dere community, popularly called the Bomu oil fields, the territory made up of six kingdoms – Babbe, Eleme, Gokana, Ken-Khana, Nyo-Khana, and Tai – and now compressed into four local governments: Eleme, Gokana, Khana, and Tai, which covers approximately 1,000 square kilometres, with a population of about 832,000, according to 2006 census, was an agricultural and fishing paradise.
It is reminiscent of the way Saro-Wiwa and other members of the Ogoni-nine patiently waited for the hangman sent by General Sani Abacha to snuff out their lives under the supervision and watchful eyes of a military administrator.
“Ogoninisation of Nigeria” is a way of saying that the scorched earth that became the fate of Ogoniland awaits other communities with oil wells, petroleum refineries, crude and refined petroleum pipelines, petrol depots and stations. Petroleum products, with low viscosity, spread faster, wider and deeper than crude petroleum with higher viscosity.
That changed with the coming of first Bomu oil well in 1958. Subsequently, Shell Petroleum, the British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London, made more discoveries in other Ogoni communities including Ebubu, Yorla, Bodo West and Korokoro, leading to the building of massive oil infrastructure, with crude oil pipelines crisscrossing the entire land.
When the oil started spilling, nothing was done to mitigate the looming danger until it became a catastrophe. An environmental assessment conducted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) documented over 2,976 oil spills between 1976 and 1991. Consequentially, decades of unchecked spills and unmitigated gas flaring, which contaminated land, water and air, impacting the health and livelihoods of the people, turned what was hitherto the world’s third-largest mangrove ecosystem into an environmental disaster zone.
Out of the rubble of this existential crisis emerged the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP), a non-governmental organization with the mandate to campaign non-violently to promote democratic awareness and protect Ogoni environment, vesting themselves with the Ogoni Bill of Rights in November 1990.
Tragically, barely four years thence, a split in the ranks of its leadership turned MOSOP into a movement for the death, not survival, of Ogoni people, with the gruesome murder, on May 21, 1994, of Albert Badey, Edward Kobani, Theophilus Orage and Samuel Orage, in Giokoo community, Gokana. More Ogoni blood subsequently flowed when the ruling military junta blamed Ken Saro-Wiwa, a social rights activist, and eight of his compatriots for the killings. Tried and convicted, Saro-Wiwa, Saturday Dobee, Nordu Eawo, Daniel Gbooko, Paul Levera, Felix Nuate, Baribor Bera, Barinem Kiobel, and John Kpuine, were executed on November 10, 1995, in Port Harcourt.
So, the Ogoni I visited in 1996 was a community under siege, occupied by the Nigerian military, with the people distraught, melancholic and forlorn. They walked around listlessly, their heads bowed in utter defeat and surrender. The bitterness was palpable and the differences between the Ogoni 4 and Ogoni 9 camps seemingly irreconcilable. For instance, while Saro-Wiwa’s parents who I met in Bane, their ancestral village, in Khana, mourned the loss of their son, the Kobanis who I visited in their Port Harcourt GRA home were implacable. But having lost 13 of their leaders, Ogoniland was the ultimate loser.
That was until 2008, when at the behest of the Nigerian government, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) conducted an independent assessment of the environment and public health impacts of oil contamination in Ogoniland. Over a 14-month period, with over 4,000 samples collected for analysis from more than 200 sites, 122 kilometres of pipeline rights of way surveyed, more than 5,000 medical records reviewed and engagement of over 23,000 people at local community meetings, UNEP’s verdict was damning: Ogoniland had become a wasteland, which, unless immediate remediation steps were taking, may well become the world’s worst ecological disaster.
The report, which was first published in 2011 indicated that pollution from over 50 years of oil operations in Ogoniland had penetrated further and deeper than many had thought. But nothing was done until the Federal Ministry of Environment in a 2016 Gazette, established the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) to implement the report. Its mandate included initiating and developing programmes to remedy hydrocarbon-impacted areas; ensuring full recovery of the ecosystem; providing appropriate technologies for remediation of the soil and groundwater; and responding to future remediation needs.
Gladly, this restoration project is turning out to be the world’s most wide-ranging and long-term oil clean-up exercise given the fact that contaminated drinking water, land, creeks and important ecosystems such as mangroves are being systematically brought back to full, productive health.
With the dual mandate of remediating hydrocarbon impacted communities and restoring livelihoods in Ogoniland, HYPREP has done an incredible job. It is to the HYPREP restored Ogoni community that I returned to last week and it was a soul-lifting experience. Contrasted with 1996, Ogoni is now a land on the cusp of renaissance. The air is fresh – clean, invigorating and free from stale smells of the 1990s, greener vegetation, aquatic life is mostly restored and the people now walk around with a spring in their step. The dignity of the Ogoni people is being gradually, albeit systematically restored, courtesy of the work HYPREP is doing.
As Prof Nenibarini Zabbey, the project coordinator, said, “HYPREP has achieved significant milestones,” working endlessly to address the devastation caused by oil spills, gas flaring and other pollutants in the area. Beyond the core value of remediation, the agency is adding electricity, healthcare delivery services and potable water facilities to its remit to spur economic activities. “What we are doing is a sustainable clean-up project and we are in conformity with the original mandate of UNEP while we are also adding values,” Zabbey said.
The projects are panoramic and breathtaking. For instance, at one of its 39 medium risk sites for soil and groundwater remediation at Ajen-Okpori, Eleme, Israel Sigalo, the team lead, remediation execution, environmental remediation unit of HYPREP, explained the incredible remediation processes and techniques. So far, 48 lots have been completed and certified by the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) in the first and second phases of the project, while work on 39 medium risk lots is ongoing, as it is also in 34 shoreline lots where 2,500 youths trained in International Maritime Organisation levels one and two certifications, basic remediation techniques with health safety and environment skills are currently employed as community workers. At the simple risk site in Obolo, Eleme, which has been completed, and the re-vegetation of remediated land undertaken, lush vegetation is already visible.
Yet, it was another experience at Goi and Kpor, Gokana, where two of the 34 lots for the ongoing shoreline cleanup, witnessed active remediation activities. Peter Lenu, technical adviser to the project coordinator on shoreline cleanup explained how low-pressure active flushing of the sediments was deployed in removing hydrocarbon residue. Here, experts skillfully separated hydrocarbons from the soil using low-pressure water, manually removing contaminants while keeping the water intact.
In Bomu, the host community for the mangrove project, well over 1.5 million mangrove seedlings have already been planted in HYPREP’s effort to recover 560 hectares of lost mangrove areas. Four million seedlings will be planted in the first phase of the project while a total 10 million seedlings will ultimately be planted. This holds significant benefit for restoration of ecosystem goods and services, fish production, climate change mitigation and adaptation. A sight of the healthy mangrove seedlings sprouting on the tidal flats of Bomu was rejuvenating.
But going beyond its core mandate, HYPREP has embarked on massive water project with water schemes in Alesa, Ebubu, Korokoro, Barako, Terabor, Kpean, Bomu, Kporghor, already completed. In healthcare, a specialist hospital, with an oncology department as special feature, is nearing completion in Kpite Tai, as well as Buan cottage hospital in Ken-Khana. Besides, primary health centres in Bori, Terabor, Nchia and Kpite, are being strengthened, while health outreaches benefitting over 10,000 Ogonis are carried out. Moreover, the Ogoni health impact study, as recommended by the UNEP report of 2011, will be conducted by the World Health Organisation (WHO) this quarter.
But it is in the area of livelihoods where 5,000 Ogoni women and youths have been trained in 20 skill sets that the most intangible impacts are being made. There has also been training for 200 farmers, aviation training for 30 youths, 60 SMEs entrepreneurs empowered with N300,000 each, 40 Nano businesses empowered with N100,000 each, education support of N250,000 paid to 200 final year students and award of N200 million scholarships to 300 Ogoni post-graduate students (200 Masters and 100 Doctoral). Specialised skills training is billed to commence in mechatronics, seafaring and creative arts.
The sheer scale of the project is mindboggling. But what is even more astounding is the fact that almost all the young men and women executing these highly technical jobs are Ogoni. And to ensure sustainability, HYPREP is also building the Centre of Excellence for Environmental Restoration (CEER), a project Prof Zabbey described as “a monumental step forward in the remediation of hydrocarbon pollution in Ogoni and beyond.”
The project coordinator said the Centre “presents itself as a citadel for the conduct of vital research on soil and water quality, providing invaluable data for future restoration work. It will also train local people on best practices in environmental management ensuring that they are directly involved in the healing process of their own land.”
Started in May 2023 on a 28.8 hectares of land, the Centre which will serve as a research hub for environmental restoration and training is a key component of the country’s effort not only to remedy the environment but also provide long-term, sustainable solution to the people.
“It is a symbol of hope, a place of learning and a hub for collaborating efforts in environmental restoration not just in Nigeria and Africa, but globally. It stands at the crossroads of science, community engagement and technology,” Zabbey ululated.
And in compliance with Federal Government’s directive that HYPREP should contribute to national food security, Prof. Zabbey announced an expansion of the Centre’s original remediation-related laboratories to include biotechnology, which he explained, will enhance phytoremediation studies and crop improvement research to contribute to national food security and sovereignty
“We have never had it so good,” crowed Gideon Nwielaghi, a 53-year-old indigene of Khana, who still remembers the mayhem of the 1990s as if it was yesterday. “I never believed I would witness the restoration of Ogoniland in my lifetime,” he said, wiping tears of joy from his eyes with a white handkerchief. That sentiment runs deep as HYPREP methodically restores the glory of the hitherto despoiled Ogoniland.
Thanks,
Ikechukwu Amaechi
MENDING OGONILAND THROUGH HYPREP
It was my pleasure to set foot for the first time in Ogoniland, though I have extensively written about it and its people. My invitation, with other tested writers and editors, gave me a privileged opportunity to see that, indeed, the much-touted restoration of the damage done by the oil spills in Ogoniland, which created a crisis of world renown some 30 years ago, has begun in earnest. The Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) led by Prof Nenibarini Zabbey, is building a world class template that will be adopted in addressing similar problems throughout the Nigerian Delta and beyond after the Ogoni prototype is validated by the concerned regulatory bodies. Nigerians deserve to hear more about this initiative, and I intend to play a role in ensuring that!
Chairman Editorial Board, Vanguard Newspaper and Columnist
OGONI LAND - AS THE NARRATIVE CHANGES WITH HYPREP INTERVENTION
The image of Ogoniland as a mystery book which offers fresh angles with each new reading, was relived through a project tour for a team of top flight journalists, by HYPREP in respect of illuminating its rich parade of intervention initiatives across Ogoniland. Operating in Ogoniland for the past seven years or so - primarily to implement the UNEP report on Ogoni Clean-Up Programme, HYPREP had been changing the community 's landscape and narrative, one hectare at a time.
But much of it's superlative enterprise in that respect had gone under -reported even to many of the visiting media chiefs.
This is not to say HYPREP's mission in Ogoni land was strange to them. Rather several of them had been writing about Ogoni land and the plight of the people for so long even without the benefit of physical experience of the subject of their exertions - Ogoni land.
In that context they would have fared better with a direct touch of the impact of HYPREP's interventions which had also suffered lack of deserved shine.
But all that stands to change with the sights that greeted the visitors as they witnessed first hand, the transformation of the otherwise sleepy Ogoni landscape, with the rise of landmark development projects that offer the dawn of real time relief for the various Ogoni communities.
The various development projects comprise functional, potable waters supply projects, hospitals, school buildings, and the unmistakable icing on the cake - Centre for Excellence in Environmental Studies, which has reached an advanced stage in completion.
With respect to the media tour, it offered dividends in many dimensions. For the visiting journalists, the tour availed them the opportunity of getting first hand acquaintance with the processes associated with the challenge of rehabilitating crude oil polluted locations. This dispensation offers to equip them for more informed communication with their respective readership, as the Ogoni project is a pilot dispensation which will help shape the course of similar ventures in future.
For HYPREP, the tour provides a most valuable platform for not only telling its own story - not just with word of mouth, but with concrete, indisputable evidence. Moreover the agency has by this tour availed itself of additional gravitas in some of the commanding heights of the country's media terrain which is expected to grow and deepen over time.
For the Ogonis - most of whom are apparently oblivious of this tour, the improved reportage from this tour will be to the benefit of their community.
For the organisers of the tour the message is clear, the wider context of maximising public appreciation of HYPREP's mission and milestones in the Ogoni Clean up programme as just been laid bare.
Dr Monima Daminabo
Member , Editorial Board , Daily Trust , Columnist and Writer
On Day 1 of Ogoni Tour
I am impressed that we first got a briefing from the HYPREP Project Coordinator and the Head of Media before going on the tour. This provided me with the conceptual tool needed to assess the physical work that we saw during the tour. I were able to understand, interrogate and appreciate what we saw.
What I took away from the tour is that HYPREP has a mandate to find solutions for cleaning up Ogoniland of the effects of the contamination of their soil, offering health facilities to cure or mitigate health challenges that the people may be suffering, and empower the people with job skills that can take them to the future.
I however, noticed the relatively high level of physical development of the environment, the well constructed roads and school facilities, which may not be due to the activities of HYPREP. But they speak to general efforts to improve the lives of the people.
However, I look forward to Day 2 when I hope to see how the earth, scorched by oil spillage, is tackled. I am hoping that I will be assured that there is a plan in place to, not only decontaminate contaminated soil, but to also prevent, or immediately clean up oil spillages.
I am concerned about the health hazard and the disruption of livelihoods that can occur to host comminities of oil drilling.
Lekan Sote,
PR Practitioner , Writer, Journalist, Columnist , Punch Newspaper
My Experience of the Ogoni Clean-up Tour: A Journey of Hope and Restoration
Ogoni evokes different emotions in different people. It was an epicentre of high political drama in the 1990s that culminated in the death and destruction of lives and property, putting Ogoni in the hearts and minds of people all over the world. The extent of hydrocarbon pollution in the area and the disruption of life and livelihood of the people put the IOCs and the Nigerian government at the receiving end of international condemnation.
HYPREP, a beacon of hope, was established to address the crisis. Their mission was clear: to restore the environment and enhance the quality of life for the Ogonis. Ample evidence demonstrates their commitment to this mission.
From the construction of the Ogoni Specialist Hospital, a 100-bed hospital of international standard, to the numerous cottage hospitals across Ogoni, the health of the people is being prioritized. The proliferation of water stations across Ogoniland is providing clean water to communities that have long suffered from contamination.
The Centre of Excellence in Environmental Restoration, a unique institution in Sub-Saharan Africa, is set to make a global impact. It will serve as a hub for data, research, and innovation, attracting scientists from around the world to collaborate on soil remediation and environmental restoration. This international standard facility, along with the new Federal University of Environmental Science in Ogoni, is set to revolutionize the education and research landscape of the region.
From a people tottering on the brink of extinction because of over 50 years of nonstop hydrocarbon pollution, Ogoniland and its people are experiencing a remarkable transformation, and the joy and hope on the faces of the people I met are a testament to this. A new era has dawned for the Ogonis, and HYPREP is leading the charge in this promising new chapter.
Dr Jeff Ukachukwu
Media Analyst , PENHALL Group
Ogoni, truly at a renaissance cusp
When we thought we had seen it all on Monday, nothing prepared us for what we saw on Tuesday( Day 2 of the Ogoni clean up tour) .
The soil and groundwater remediation, shoreline clean-up and mangrove/biodiversity restoration projects being carried out by HYPREP are revolutionary and breath-taking. We visited sites in ELEME and Gokana LGAs.
Ogoniland which suffered criminal degradation of its environment, liquidating, literally its flora and fauna by the industrial oil complex, is at a renaissance cusp with renewed development.
With the work HYPREP is doing, Ogoniland and its longsuffering people are on the verge of a significant transformation.
Deploying cutting-edge technology in solving the existential problems of soil and groundwater degradation, and restoring the mangrove/biodiversity ecosystems is tantamount to giving the Ogoni people a second chance at life after a dark period of gloom and misery.
Our trip to the creeks was fascinating. When all the projects are completed, it will be a new and fitting beginning for the people.
Ikechukwu Amaechi
The NICHE E-in-C
A journey through Ogoni, the Titusville of Nigeria
“I AM happy the mangroves are coming back. I feel happy because for a long time now, we haven’t had fish, no crabs; life has not been easy. But today, I can walk through that (pointing at the river in Gio) to fetch this jionudor (a palm tree-like stump) that serves as our firewood. Before now, the river was covered by oil. Everything in it died. Now, aquatic life is coming back gradually. I am happy and I know many of our people are happy.”
The above are the words of 65-year-old Godwin kirijio a retired civil servant, as he waded through the shallow end of the Ogoni River in Gio, Gokane Local Government of Rivers State. I engaged the retired civil servant by the bank of the river.
At a time when the Rivers of Crisis is threatening to overflow its bank, I was on a tour of the creeks of Ogoniland.
My beat is the South-South and the South-East as Regional Editor of the Nigerian Tribune. I had heard stories of poisoned soil and dead fishes and wanted a feel of the life that killed them. Then, I had an opportunity through an agency of the government called HYPREP (Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project) which is charged with cleaning up the polluted soil and water of Ogoniland. The Dr Peterside Dakuku-led Media Voices for Accountability extended the opportunity to me which I grabbed without hesitation. I wish there was a political equivalent of that agency HYPREP. If there was, we would empower it to detoxify our politics, clean up the beds of Rivers and make the people live again.
The two-day voyage in Ogoniland opened my eyes to the effects of the damages caused in that locality by the activities of the International Oil Companies (IOCs), which have operated in Ogoniland for over six decades. I saw what many may never see.
Remember Titusville, Pennsylvania, United States of America? It is the ‘Oil Creek Valley’, where Edwin L. Drake first struck oil in commercial quantity on August 27, 1859. The story of the once booming creek-turned city presents for every good student of petroleum history, the evil associated with the wealth obtained from the black substance known as crude oil.
The unfortunate story of Titusville has nothing to do with the fact that the first oil explorer, Drake, died as a poor prisoner in 1880. The tragedy of Titusville lies in the environmental degradation caused by the oil exploration activities that have affected the environment and the people.
The most unfortunate account of the misfortune of oil exploration in Titusville is contained in what petroleum experts call ‘Orphaned Oil Wells’, a euphemism for abandoned oil wells that have passed their usefulness. Those once-prosperous oil wells, now abandoned, cause unmitigated environmental damages.
The American Environmental Protection Agency (EPA,) states that over three million ‘Orphaned Oil Wells’, which “have not been properly plugged and decommissioned”, are scattered all over the country with “over nine million Americans living within a mile of the abandoned oil wells!”
The implications, according to the EPA, are that: “When an oil well is abandoned, it may emit toxins and pollution that contaminate groundwater, affecting local communities and the environment. Abandoned and orphaned wells are also considered major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions… Improperly plugged or decommissioned oil and gas wells are essentially open holes in the ground. They may release toxins like methane, arsenic, benzene, and hydrogen sulphide into the environment, even when they are no longer productive. They can cause fires and explosions. Even a small leak from a single well could have a tremendous impact over years or decades, affecting the soil and groundwater and causing air pollution.”
As it was with Titusville in America, so it is with the oil-rich Niger Delta region of Nigeria. The elders of my place say that a whirlwind which troubles the ogi (raw akamu) seller must have rendered the yam-flour seller empty of her wares (Ategun to damu ologi ti so elelubo d’ofo). If America with its sophistication in technology could lament about environmental degradation because of oil exploration, one can imagine the fate of the environment and the people of the Niger Delta.
The history of Ogoniland is one that humanity will never forget. The oil-rich locality was largely unknown until the early ‘90s when the indigenes began agitating against the adverse effects of oil exploration in the area and demanded action to alleviate their suffering. The flagship of that agitation was the Ogoni Bill of Rights of November 1990, endorsed by leaders of Ogoni from Babbe, Gokana, Ken Khana, Nyo Khan and Tai.
The Bill, an intellectual arm of the struggle against environmental devastation in Ogoniland, also had its militant wing known as the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP). MOSOP was led by the State-murdered environmentalists, writer and poet, Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa, otherwise known as Ken Saro-Wiwa, or simply, Saro-Wiwa.
The agitation for the emancipation of Ogoniland from the shackles of IOCs visiting untold environmental pollution in the area took a tragic-dramatic turn on May 21, 1994, when the foursome of Albert Badey, Edward Kobani, Theophilus Orage and Samuel Orage, who were holding a meeting in Giokoo Community in the Gokana Local Government Area of Rivers State, were attacked by an irate mob and murdered.
The Federal Military Government of the late Head of State, General Sani Abacha, wasted no time as it arrested Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others, accusing them of being the masterminds of the killing of the four Ogoni leaders. Saro-Wiwa and his eight Ogoni leaders: Saturday Dobee, Nordu Eawo, Daniel Gbooko, Paul Levera, Felix Nuate, Baribor Bera, Barinem Kiobel, and John Kpuine, were paraded before Justice Ibrahim Auta’s special tribunal which found them all guilty and sentenced them to death by hanging.
The Abacha-led military junta affirmed the sentence on November 8, 1995, and had all the nine Ogoni leaders executed on November 10, 1995. Their bodies were never released to their families! In all, Ogoniland lost 13 of its illustrious sons to the agitation to have a clean environment for the people. Many of the IOCs left the area and have not returned. Many oil wells in the locality became ‘orphaned’ and the attendant effects of such ‘Orphaned Oil Wells’ combined with the already environmental degradation, made Ogoniland lie in waste!
The death of the initial Ogoni Four and the execution of the Ogoni Nine opened the eyes of the international communities to the happenings in Ogoniland. Taking a clue from the happenings, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) commissioned a report on the environmental devastation in Ogoniland. The UNEPA report recommended, among others, the immediate remediation of the soil and groundwater in Ogoniland.
The report was presented to President Olusegun Obasanjo’s government, which did nothing. Thus, the Ogoni Clean-Up project became a political sloganeering in the hands of successive governments until, surprisingly, the lethargic administration of General Muhammadu Buhari took over the challenge and initiated the Ogoni Clean-Up Project with the establishment of HYPREP under the Federal Ministry of Environment, vide a memo dated April 28, 2022, with Ref No, PRES/81/SGF/82.
Before the Ogoni Clean-Up Tour, Ogoni had remained, to me, a mystery; a land of fairy tales, typical of the mystical city of Kathmandu in Nepal. So, the tour became experiential, especially as the team was taken through the landscapes to have first-hand information of what happened in the land of Ken Saro-Wiwa, and what HYPREP is doing in fulfilling the mandate given to it to remediate Ogoniland.
The idea of the tour, when it was first mooted by Dr Dakuku, ignited in me a deep sense of enthusiasm. I knew it was an opportunity I must take, first, out of curiosity. But more importantly, to have a first-hand idea of what the famous Ogoniland of the late Ken Saro-Wiwa and his eight other heroes of the 1995 agitation against the inhuman environmental degradation caused in the area, and the entire Niger Delta in general, looks like, by the operations of the IOCs extracting crude oil.
My first impression as we took a detour to Ogoniland was that life had returned to the once-devastated land. The pre-tour presentation by the Communication Department of HYPREP headed by Dr Enuolare Mba-Nwighoh on what the body had put on the ground, no doubt fired inspiration to explore the famed Ogoniland. Ditto the idea, as suggested by the Project Coordinator (PC) of HYPREP, Professor Nenibarin Zabbey, that HYPREP had gone beyond the original mandate of remediation to providing basic infrastructures to make life abundant for the Ogoni people.
So, as we hit Ogoniland, I looked out to see if indeed the narratives have changed and if life is back in Ogoniland. I admit here that indeed, Ogoniland is getting back its glory before the devastation. The peasants and their farmlands, the luxuriant vegetation, the new road networks and the presence of government in the locality all combined to show that Ogoniland will be great again.
Just as Professor Zabbey, HYPREP Project Coordinator assured that: “HPREP will implement the UNEP reports and recommendations but not sheepishly” but would “add value to the report. Beyond the core value of remediation as recommended by UNEP, we are adding electricity, healthcare delivery services and potable water facilities”, the agency can be said with empirical evidence that it has lived up to its billing as an interventionist agency.
The HYREP water projects in Korghor/Gio and Barako, the giant ongoing 100-bed specialist hospital in Dotem due for completion in September; the 40-bed cottage hospital at Buan Community slated for commissioning in July and the N40 billion Centre of Excellence, a research institute with its Integrated Soil Management Centre (ISMC), sitting on a 28-hectare of land, are mind-boggling!
With what HYPREP has been able to do, one can confidently say that life is back in Ogoniland! The remediation works ongoing in Ogoniland to address the pain of the people are pointers to the fact that life could become abundant in the area again.
Day two of the tour of the HYPREP remediation sites opened one’s eyes to the level of devastation visited on the agrarian community by the various oil companies that had operated in Ogoniland in the last 60 years! I saw for the first time what oil spillage looks like. I was shocked and sad to see, for instance, at LOT 15 of the Obajioken remediation site, a land measuring 30,750 square metres, polluted up to 6.2 metres deep! Even with my almost total anosmia state, I could perceive the smell of crude oil in the environment!
But it is heartwarming to note that gradually, life is returning to Ogoniland. Revegetation is taking place and aquatic habitats are being restored. The massive excavation sites geared towards removing the contamination in the soil and groundwater are encouraging. One can boast that the Ogoni Clean-up project has gone beyond political sloganeering and has now become a reality.
More engaging is the fact that HYPREP is also focusing on reforestation of the ancient Ogoni mangroves. Though I couldn’t follow the team on the voyage to the big sites for the mangrove replanting because of my phobia of water, the few sites by the banks of the Ogoni River at Goi in Gokana Local Government Area, are enough testimonials that aquatic elements and avian species would soon return to their natural habitats. The simple implication of this is that the locals would soon have their aquatic delicacies and means of livelihood back!
More delightful is the engagement of the locals in the projects. The sense of belonging, relevance and ownership given to the Ogoni rural dwellers cannot be quantified. This is the physical manifestation of light at the end of the tunnel!
This is why HYPREP cannot afford to drop the ball. Its ambitious projects in Ogoniland indicate that with the right mindset, sustainable willpower, and determination to make a difference, establishments can indeed change the narrative for a people once on the verge of extinction. One can only hope and pray that Nigeria will not happen to those giant strides in Ogoniland.
The Ogoni people, nay, the entire Nigerian people, owe it a duty to sustain the efforts of HYPREP in Ogoniland by building a solid wall of protection around the facilities deployed to redress the injustices of the past six decades. HYPREP must be self-challenged to keep upping the ante. The success of the Ogoni Clean-Up Project is the success of the Niger Delta people.
The PC of HYPREP, Professor Zabbey, re-echoed this when he intoned that “HYPREP sees the Ogoni clean-up project beyond Ogoniland. What we are doing is a sustainable project for the entire Niger Delta region and the whole country at large. We are determined to ensure that what we are doing in Ogoniland will serve as a template for other areas where we have that kind of experience as Ogoni.” Nothing can be more encouraging!
As the tour ended, the biggest message for me is that the late environmentalists, Ken Saro-Wiwa, and his fellow Ogoni patriots who were murdered by the State, and the four Ogoni chiefs who paid the supreme price for a better Ogoniland, in the wake of the Ogoni crisis, did not die in vain. Without any intention to engage in necromancy, I say this: Ken Saro-Wiwa, hear this: You and your ideas live on in HYPREP.
'Suyi Ayodele;
Nigerian Tribune
Cleaning up Ogoniland, the HYPREP way, by Ikechukwu Amaechi
Visiting Ogoniland last week after my first visit in 1996 was a bittersweet experience. It was like traversing two worlds in less than three decades. Unbelievable! I went to Ogoni for the first time to chronicle the mess oil industry and the Nigerian state had made of Ogoniland.
Before oil was discovered in the Ogoni community of K-Dere, popularly called the Bomu oil fields, the territory made up of six kingdoms – Babbe, Eleme, Gokana, Ken-Khana, Nyo-Khana, and Tai – and now compressed into four local governments: Eleme, Gokana, Khana, and Tai, which covers approximately 1,000 square kilometers, with a population of about 832,000, according to 2006 census, was an agricultural and fishing society.
But all that changed with the coming of Bomu oil well 1 in 1958. Subsequently, Shell made more discoveries in other Ogoni communities, including Ebubu, Yorla, Bodo West and Korokoro, leading to the building of massive oil infrastructure, with crude oil pipelines crisscrossing the entire land. When the oil started spilling, nothing was done to mitigate the looming danger until it became a catastrophe. An environmental assessment conducted by the United Nations Environment Programme, UNEP, documented over 2,976 oil spills between 1976 and 1991. Consequentially, decades of unchecked spills and unmitigated gas flaring, which contaminated land, water and air, impacting the health and livelihoods of the people, turned what was hitherto the world’s third-largest mangrove ecosystem into an environmental disaster zone.</p><br><p>Faced with an existential threat, the people came up with the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People, MOSOP, a non-governmental organisation with the mandate to campaign non-violently to promote democratic awareness and protect Ogoni environment, vesting themselves with the Ogoni Bill of Rights in November 1990.
Tragically, barely four years thence, a split in the ranks of its leadership turned MOSOP into a movement for the death of Ogoni people, with the gruesome murder by an irate mob, on May 21, 1994, of Albert Badey, Edward Kobani, Theophilus Orage and Samuel Orage, in Giokoo community, Gokana. More Ogoni blood subsequently flowed when the ruling military junta blamed Ken Saro-Wiwa, a social rights activist, and eight of his compatriots for the killings. Tried and convicted, Saro-Wiwa, Saturday Dobee, Nordu Eawo, Daniel Gbooko, Paul Levera, Felix Nuate, Baribor Bera, Barinem Kiobel, and John Kpuine, were executed on November 10, 1995, in Port Harcourt.
So, the Ogoni I visited in 1996 was a community under siege, occupied by the Nigerian military, with the people distraught, melancholic and forlorn. They walked about, their heads bowed in utter defeat and surrender.
That was until 2008, when at the behest of the Nigerian government, the United Nations Environment Programme, UNEP, conducted an independent assessment of the environment and public health impacts of oil contamination in Ogoniland. Over a 14-month period, with over 4,000 samples collected for analysis from more than 200 sites, 122 kilometres of pipeline rights of way surveyed, more than 5,000 medical records reviewed and engagement of over 23,000 people at local community meetings, UNEP’s independent scientific assessment finding was damning: Ogoniland had become a wasteland, which, unless immediate remediation steps were taken, may well become the world’s worst ecological disaster.
The report, which was first published in 2011 indicated that pollution from over 50 years of oil operations in Ogoniland had penetrated further and deeper than many had thought. But nothing was done until the Federal Ministry of Environment in a 2016 Gazette, established the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project, HYPREP, to undertake environmental restoration in Ogoni, building on the 2011 UNEP report. This environmental restoration is turning out to be one of the world’s most wide-ranging and long-term oil clean-up exercise given the fact that contaminated drinking water, land, creeks and important ecosystems such as mangroves are being systematically brought back to full, productive health.
With the dual mandate of remediating hydrocarbon impacted communities and restoring livelihoods in Ogoniland, HYPREP has done an incredible job. It is to the HYPREP restored Ogoni community that I returned to last week. And it was a soul-lifting experience. Contrasted with the 1996 experience, Ogoni is a land on the cusp of renaissance. The air was fresh, the vegetation was greener, the rivers had palpable aquatic life and the people no longer walked about with their heads bowed. They rather had a spring in their step.
And the reason is simple. As Prof Nenibarini Zabbey, the project coordinator, said: “HYPREP has achieved significant milestones,” working endlessly to address the devastation caused by oil spills, gas flaring and other pollutants in the area.
Besides, beyond the core value of remediation, HYPREP is adding electricity, healthcare delivery services and potable water facilities to spur economic activities. “What we are doing is a sustainable clean-up project and we are in conformity with the original mandate of UNEP while we are also adding values,” he said.
The projects are breathtaking. For instance, at one of its 39 medium risk sites for soil and groundwater remediation at Ajen-Okpori, Eleme, Israel Sigalo, the team lead, remediation execution, environmental remediation unit of HYPREP, explained the incredible remediation processes and techniques. So far, 48 lots have been completed and certified by the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, NOSDRA, in the first and second phases of the project, while 39 medium risk lots are ongoing.
Yet, it was another experience at Goi and Kpor, Gokana, where two of the 34 lots for the ongoing shoreline cleanup, witnessed active remediation activities. Peter Lenu, technical adviser to the project coordinator on shoreline cleanup explained how low-pressure active flushing of the sediments was deployed in removing hydrocarbon residue.
In Bomu, the host community for the mangrove project, well over 1.5 million mangrove seedlings have already been planted in HYPREP’s effort to recover 560 hectares of lost mangrove areas. Four million seedlings will be planted in the first phase of the project while a total 10 million seedlings will be planted over the restoration period, which holds significant benefit for restoration of ecosystem goods and services, fish production, climate change mitigation and adaptation. A sight of the healthy mangrove seedlings sprouting on the tidal flats of Bomu, was, in itself, rejuvenating.
But going beyond its core mandate, HYPREP has embarked on massive water project with water schemes in Alesa, Ebubu, Korokoro, Barako, Terabor, Kpean, Bomu, Kporghor, already completed. In the healthcare, a specialist hospital, with an oncology department as special feature, is nearing completion in Kpite Tai, as well as Buan cottage hospital in Ken-Khana. Besides, primary health centres in Bori, Terabor, Nchia and Kpite, are being strengthened, while health outreaches benefitting over 10,000 Ogonis are carried out. Moreover, the Ogoni health impact study, as recommended by the UNEP report of 2011, will be conducted by the World Health Organisation, WHO, this first quarter.
But it is in the area of livelihoods where 5,000 Ogoni women and youths trained in 20 skill sets and graduated with starter packs that the most intangible impacts are being made. There has also been training for 200 farmers, aviation training for 30 youths, 60 SMEs entrepreneurs empowered with N300,000 each, 40 Nano businesses empowered with N100,000 each, education support of N250,000 paid to 200 final year students and award of N200 million scholarship to 300 Ogoni post-graduate students (200 Masters and 100 Doctoral). Specialised skills training is billed to commence in mechatronics, seafaring and creative arts.
The sheer scale of the project is mindboggling. But what is even more astounding is the fact that most of the young men and women executing these highly technical jobs are Ogoni people. And to ensure sustainability, HYPREP is also building the Centre of Excellence for Environmental Restoration, CEER, a project Prof Zabbey described as “a monumental step forward in the remediation of hydrocarbon pollution in Ogoni and beyond.”
And in compliance with Federal Government’s directive that HYPREP should contribute to national food security, Prof. Zabbey announced an expansion of the Centre’s original remediation-related laboratories to include biotechnology, which he explained, will enhance phytoremediation studies and crop improvement research to contribute to national food security and sovereignty.
“We have never had it so good,” crowed Gideon Nwielaghi, an indigene Khana. “I never believed I would witness the restoration of Ogoniland in my lifetime.” He is not alone as that seems to be the singsong in the hitherto despoiled Ogoniland as HYPREP carries out its restoration magic.
Thanks,
Ikechukwu Amaechi
Experience on HYPREP Ogoniland tours (Day 1)
With benefit of hindsight, having reported Ogoniland during the MOSOP struggles in the 90s, the tours provided opportunity to compare two eras: one, a highly militarized and deprived wasteland and the other, an emerging tranquil habitation where life is precious and appreciated. There is bliss in the atmosphere.
Access to Ogoniland during the tours was without let or hinder. No barrage of soldiers or other forces of state to impede movement.
There is a feel of commerce in the atmosphere, as the people engaged in farming and other trades.
Plantain farms mingled with homes, as other fruit trees compete for space in neighbourhoods, to announce the agrarian vocation of the people.
The network of roads are appreciably in motorable state. There's now clean water for communities carry out domestic chores and be free from diseases associated with pollution.
Thanks to massive water projects undertaken by the Hydrocarbon Polution Remediation Project (HYPREP), at strategic points in Ogoniland. HYPREP is the executor of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), to clean up Ogoniland.
Schools are in session, businesses are running and the mood in Ogoniland is palpably tranquil, due to an appreciable presence of government.
Youths are busy at various HYPREP contract centres, the most iconic being the Centre of Excellence for Environmental Restoration Project, which has attained 70 per cent completion.......
ALABI Williams
Journalist, Columnist , Writer . Guardian Newspaper
Ogoni Clean-Up Tour Day 1: What I saw
Before the Ogoni Clean-Up tour organised by Media Voices for Accountability ( MVA) and the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP), Ogoni had remained to me a mystery. a land of fairy tales, typical of the mystical city of Kathmandu in Nepal.
The Day 1 of the tour on March 10, 2025, was, to me, very experiential! The idea of the tour, when it was first mooted, ignited in me a deep sense of enthusiasm. I knew it was an opportunity I must take, first, out of curiosity. But more importantly, to have a first-hand idea of what the famous Ogoniland of the late KenSaro-Wiwa and his eight other heroes of the 1995 agitation against the inhuman environmental degradation caused in the area, and the entire Niger Delta in general, by the operations of the various International Oil Companies (IOCs) extracting crude oil.
I would like to say that from the logistics provided by the management of HYPREP for the tour, and the tour itinerary, the journey looked promising. And indeed, it was a worthwhile exercise!
My first impression as we took a detour to Ogoniland is that life has returned to the once devastated land. The pre presentation by the Communication Department of HYPREP on what the body has put on ground, no doubt fired one’s inspiration to explore the famed Ogoniland. Ditto the idea, as suggested by the Project Coordinator (PC) of HYPREP, Professor Nenibarin Zabbey, that HYPREP had gone beyond the original mandate of remediation to providing basic infrastructures to make life abundant for the Ogoni people.
So, as we hit Ogoniland, I looked out to see if indeed the narratives have changed and if life is back in Ogoniland. I admit here that indeed, Ogoniland is getting back its glory before the devastation. The peasants and their farmlands, the luxuriant vegetation, the new road networks and the presence of government in the locality all combined to show that Ogoniland will be great again.
I want to end this by encouraging HYPREP not to drop the ball its ambitious projects in Ogoniland are indicators that with the right frame of mind, sustainable willpower and determination to make a difference, establishments can indeed change the narratives for a people that were once on the verge of extinction.
The HYREP water projects in Korghor/Gio and Barako, the giant on-going 100-bed specialist hospital in Dotem due for completion in September; the 40-bed cottage hospital at Buan Community slated for commissioning in July and the N40 billion Centre of Excellence, a research institute with its Integrated Soil Management Centre (ISMC), sitting on a 28-hectare of land, are mind-boggling!
As I look forward to the Day 2 of the tour to the various remediation sites, the core competence of HYPREP, I would like to record that HYPREP is a pragmatic response to the plight of Ogoni people.
‘SUYI AYODELE
NIGERIAN TRIBUNE
For me, the projects being constructed by the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) in a bid to improve quality of lives for oil communities in Ogoni is a silent revolution that is about changing narratives in the addressing the neglected the people. Though mandated with the task of cleaning up the 65 identified Ogoni oil contaminated sites as contained in the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), HYPREP has gone further to identify more than 100 other sites that need remediation.
Not only restricting its operation to just remediation of devastated oil communities, HYPREP has found it worthy to embark on projects that are capable of improving quality of life and giving hope to Ogoni communities that have suffered neglect for the purpose of empowering them economically for the future.
The water treatment plant, the Ogoni Specialist Hospital and the massive Centre of Excellence for Environmental Restoration attest to the resolve of HYPREP to achieve its mandates of not only remediation but pursuing long term measures to tackle myriad of challenges confronting oil communities.
What is critical here is creating a synergy among critical stakeholders and getting the much needed support from communities for HYPREP to fully deliver on its vision. Considering what I saw and heard on the first day of the tour, I have no doubt in mind that, for the first time, there seems to be a deliberate attempt to change the story of neglected Ogoni communities. The HYPREP Team is highly dedicated and have shown passion and commitment in dealing with the issues and providing solutions.
Simon Reef
Columnist , LEADERSHIP
Ogoni HYPREP Tours (Day Two)
The visit to HYPREP remediation sites at Ogale and Obajioken, where works are ongoing to return devastated swathes of farmlands to pristine nature was very revealing.
Leakage from NNPCL pipelines had caused damages to vast soil and groundwater in this part of Ogoniland.
To carry out the repairs, we saw massive excavations to enable the process of bio-remediation. We saw the process of treating ground water to remove chemical pollutants that are way beyond what is permitted for the human body.
The efforts to rescue the shoreline at Gokana, site of the devastating SPDC oil spill of 2008/09 evoked a sense of man's cruelty to nature. Here, the mangrove cover of that stretch from Goi to Bomu had been scorched by the spill, leaving behind a marshy sludge that was once a habitation to flora and fauna; a once thriving enclave of economic activities for the people. Fish and other aquatic species no longer thrive here.
But thanks to HYPREP, the massive planting of mangrove is in top gear.
First we witnessed the intensive process to contain and expel the sludge and return the shore to it's old nature, where animal and plant could thrive. It is a painstaking exercise. The soil is flushed to get rid the pollutants and the polluted water is expelled. Tender mangrove trees are then planted on the reclaimed sight.
One had the privilege to plant a mangrove tree and it was a great pleasure to be part of this exercise.
One goes home with an attainment of fulfillment, that the Ogoni injustice is being redressed.
It needn't happen in the first place if the authorities were not negligent in the reckless and rapacious exploration for crude over the years, without adhering to best standards. It is still ongoing and lamentable that vast areas across the country are being devastated in the crude search for solid minerals. We ravage the earth for precious metals, but with little care for the environment and the people of the area. We contaminate farmlands and fishing waters with no apology.
It was a delight to see and participate in the reclamation of Ogoniland from the devastation unleashed in the search for crude.
The visit is an eye-opener, that several other Ogoniland are waiting to happen along corridors where oil pipelines crisscross. These pipelines are old and weak. They are not maintained.
Ogoni shouldn't have happened if there was a culture of maintenance in the country. It shouldn't have happened if government had listened to the cries of Ken Sarowiwa and others.
I recommend that it is time to pay more attention to the environment. Kudos to HYPREP for this excursion into reality.
ALABI Williams
Guardian Newspaper columnist
Rewriting the Future: Ogoniland's Journey from Devastation to Restoration
HYPREP is spearheading groundbreaking environmental restoration, actively carrying out soil and water remediation across more than 30 sites in Ogoniland. At one of HYPREP's 39 Medium-Risk Sites in Ajen-Okpori, Eleme LGA, Rivers State, we witnessed cutting-edge technology deployed in real-time—working tirelessly to cleanse the land and water of hydrocarbon pollution.
The process was a symphony of science and precision. The remediation exerts excavated the ground, soil and groundwater treated with biomaterials. Once purified, the soil was meticulously replaced—often in a condition even better than before the contamination. In some cases, remediation was done in situ, a decision guided by scientific and environmental factors.
The site, spanning over 560 hectares, resembled an immense burial ground—not for the dead, but for the sins of pollution, where the earth is being resurrected with some of the most advanced remediation technologies available. The Phase 1 Completed Simple Risk Site in Obolo, Eleme, was a testament to this transformation. We saw new lands being excavated, soil undergoing treatment before our eyes, and the painstaking effort to reclaim what was once lost.
What struck me most was not just the scale of the work but the hands behind it—Nigerians, primarily local Ogoni people, leading the charge. Not a single foreign expert was in sight. It was an empowering realisation: our people have mastered the science and environmental remediation techniques. This knowledge must be preserved and expanded, ensuring Nigeria stays at the forefront of this vital industry. Their leadership is a source of pride and inspiration for us all.
At Goi and Kpor, Gokana LGA, we visited two of the 34 lots dedicated to the ongoing Shoreline Cleanup. The work here was just as remarkable. Experts skillfully separated hydrocarbons from the soil using low-pressure water, manually removing contaminants while keeping the water intact. The unwavering commitment to natural, chemical-free remediation was evident, reassuring us of these restoration efforts' sustainability and ecological balance.
In Bomu, the heartbeat of the mangrove restoration project, I stood before over 1.3 million newly planted mangroves on the remediated shoreline—an expanse of 560 hectares in the making. This may very well be the largest man-made mangrove forest in the world. In solidarity with the community, I planted a mangrove tree, a small but symbolic act of hope. Already, the sidelines of this restored ecosystem are thriving—birds returning, nature reclaiming its home. When these trees stand tall in a few years, this place will be a living testament to the power of restoration.
These projects are just a glimpse of the extraordinary work scattered across Ogoniland. What HYPREP is doing here is nothing short of world-class. This is a beacon of possibility in a country where ambitious projects often falter.
HYPREP has placed Nigeria on the global map—not just as a participant but as a leader in environmental restoration, protection, and the fight against climate change. Ogoniland is no longer just a story of devastation—it is becoming a model for healing, a blueprint for the restoration of polluted lands and waters across the Niger Delta and beyond. This work has the potential to inspire similar efforts worldwide, giving us hope for a more sustainable future.
I am in awe of what I witnessed. The world must come and see this transformation. And HYPREP must ensure that this story is told.
By Dr Jeff Ukachukwu
Media Analyst , PENHALL Group
This article has no title
After seeing the quantum of decontamination work being done by the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project to remedy the heartless damage done to the soil of Ogoniland, it became difficult to pick which title best suits this article.
The first title that came to mind was “In Limbo in Ogoni Death Row”. Then came “Ogoninisation of Nigeria” and, finally, “Nigeria is a Crime Scene”. The first title uses death row cells, where condemned criminals await the hangman, as a metaphor for Ogoni people awaiting the death of their lives and livelihood, from the contamination of their land.
It is reminiscent of the way Saro-Wiwa and other members of the Ogoni-nine patiently waited for the hangman sent by General Sani Abacha to snuff out their lives under the supervision and watchful eyes of a military administrator.
“Ogoninisation of Nigeria” is a way of saying that the scorched earth that became the fate of Ogoniland awaits other communities with oil wells, petroleum refineries, crude and refined petroleum pipelines, petrol depots and stations. Petroleum products, with low viscosity, spread faster, wider and deeper than crude petroleum with higher viscosity.
“Nigeria is a Crime Scene” describes the continuous, cavalier, defilement of oil-producing communities by players in Nigeria’s oil sector, like International Oil Companies, Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited and its predecessor, regulators, and other government agencies and private organisations.
If you took a flying boat from Goi to Bomu, bent down to plant a mangrove tree, felt dizzy and had to be rushed back to the shore, after water was poured on your head, you will understand the depth of the injustice done with the hanging of Saro-Wiwa and the damage done to the soil, water, health and livelihood of the people of Ogoniland.
Apart from extremely hazardous health implications, the contamination degrades the soil, waterbodies and residential areas. This greatly impaired the lives and livelihood of farmers and fishermen in Ogoniland.
The irony is that fishmongers in Rivers State now get their fresh fish supply from Lagos State, a negation of the assumption that you cannot bring coal to Newcastle, whose last deep mine was incidentally closed in 2005 after the decline that started in the 1980s.
In 1993, the Federal Military Government, probably mindful of the irresponsible negligence of NNPC, IOCs and illegal artisanal refineries, asked United Nations Environment Programme to assess the level of degradation of the Niger Delta, using Ogoniland as a focal point. The UNEP study, which started in 2009, submitted its report to the Federal Government in 2011.
Among other things, the report found that the observed level of contamination was higher than the Nigerian government’s stated threshold, which suggests that the government was negligent in enforcing its own safety policies. Also, the failure of biological processes and surface crusts, resulting from burning, greatly hampered natural and cheaper pollution attenuation processes.
When spilled oil gets to their roots, plants die. And fish die in polluted rivers or move to safer regions. Poisonous volatile organic compounds, like benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenes, alkanes, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons become more prevalent in affected communities.
These cause cancer, respiratory and neurological problems, infertility and blindness. Benzene, a carcinogen, was detected in both Ogoniland soil and the groundwaters. When inhaled, its particles, generated from illegal refineries, lead to the premature death of patients with underlying heart and lung diseases.
UNEP’s recommendations included decommissioning of drill assets that failed integrity assessment tests: discouragement of illegal refineries (but because of competition against IOCs, the report did not suggest trade cooperatives for the illegal refineries under government supervision); immediate oil spill remediations; and regular cleanup of contaminated soil and sediments.
In 2016, the Federal Ministry of Environment established the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project to implement the UNEP Report to remediate and restore polluted Ogoniland soil and groundwaters. The mandate included initiating and developing work programmes to remedy hydrocarbon-impacted areas; ensuring full recovery of the ecosystem; providing appropriate technologies for remediation of the soil and groundwater; and responding to future remediation needs.
HYPREP demarcated the pollution-impacted areas into three zones that could either be the low-impacted sites that affect only lands that include farmlands; the medium-impacted sites that include land and groundwater areas; and the high-level impacted sites that include residential areas where people reside.
By the way, anyone living in Lagos and other such high population density urban centres in Nigeria should be aware that, by this definition, they are indeed living in the high-level impacted areas with the petrol stations, petroleum product depots and petroleum products pipelines in their neighbourhoods.
With the potentially nationwide cleanup that HYPREP is likely to embark upon in the future, the $1bn said to have been earmarked for the cleanup cannot complete the job. HYPREP, the special-purpose vehicle set up to do the job, has already embarked upon a lot of activities that will require a lot of money in Ogoniland.
Some of the projects are a 100-bed hospital with facilities to treat cancer, a cottage hospital, and several solar-powered waterworks schemes to deliver potable water to both pollution-impacted communities and those free of pollution. It is also planning a power plant project.
The highly ambitious Centre of Excellence and Environmental Restoration, recommended by the UNEP Report, is under construction. Its mandate is to train experts in environmental and monitoring skills; teach livelihood skill sets; assist members of the community with business plans; and, where necessary, enable local and foreign training for qualified members of the communities.
Yet HYPREP is carrying out its core responsibility of land and water remediation, replanting of mangroves in the rivers that have been cleaned, and training youths that have been forcibly weaned away from land and fish farming livelihoods by the oil pollution.
If no one will mind what may appear to be a repetition of facts, it is necessary to reiterate that the purpose of the decontamination project is to get the people back to their original occupation of farming and fishing.
The good news is that grass is already re-growing in some parts of highly-impacted Ogoniland, even in the dry season. This work, though very expensive, must continue so that the lives and livelihoods of the communities in Ogoniland can be restored.
Though the international green lobby insists that fossil fuels must be phased out, because of its negative global warming effect, it will take a long time to phase it out. But NNPCL and the IOCs must dedicate funds to research for technology that can prevent or control future contamination of the soil and water of petroleum mining, refining and storage communities.
The government should increase the decontamination budget; intensify and extend the cleanup to the other parts of the Niger Delta and the rest of Nigeria; encourage the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency to be prompt in monitoring and ensuring remediation in affected communities.
In addition, state governments should discourage private boreholes and empower municipal water corporations to take responsibility for potable water. Because pollution is practically nationwide, state waterworks should drill water from aquifers far below contaminated soils in communities that host petrol depots and stations.
Australian poet, Gemma Troy, who said, “Your words can plant gardens or burn whole forests down,” may be telling players in Nigeria’s petroleum sector to be more cautious in the way they carry out their operations.
Lekan Sote,
PR Practitioner , Writer, Journalist, Columnist , Punch Newspaper
Ogoniland On The Brink Of New Day
The discovery of crude oil in 1958 in Ogoniland, comprising six kingdoms of Babbe, Eleme, Gokana, Ken-Khana, Nyo-Khana and Tai, now compacted into four local government areas of Eleme, Gokana and Khana has a landmass that is approximated to be 1,000 square kilometres, with about 832,000 people, according to the 2006 National Census. Instead of prosperity and growth that should have improved the quality of lives for the people in the oil communities, many years of mindless exploitation by both foreign and local oil companies have been unleashed on the distraught but oil-rich area. Ogoniland has become a metaphor for an economic wasteland created by oil companies that have devastated the environment and disempowered people.
Flaming Advocacy
Amidst the exploitation and suffering of the people in the oil community, the late environmentalist and writer of repute, who hailed from the Ogoni kingdom, Ken Saro-Wiwa, spearheaded a fierce advocacy that was aimed at calling local and global attention to the depravity and criminal neglect let loose on Ogoniland with the sole purpose of addressing problems caused by oil exploration and exploitation by both local and international firms. Since the discovery of the Bomu oil well in 1958 and the subsequent oil discoveries by Shell in other Ogoniland, the incidences of oil spills have slowly destroyed the biodiversity of the area and threatened livelihoods, while turning oil exploitation into a poisoned chalice for the local populace. After decades of outcries against the injustices perpetrated by these oil companies, an environmental assessment by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) revealed that there were over 2,976 oil spills between 1976 and 1991.
Using a non-governmental organisation, the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP), Saro-Wiwa led other ethnic affiliates to engage in non-violent protests against oil companies involved in despoliation of the Ogoni environment in order to protect Ogoni environment through the Ogoni Bill of Rights it promulgated in November 1990. The discordant voices in the Ogoni struggle grew louder when on 21st May, 1994, four members of Ogoni people: Albert Badey, Edward Kobani, Theophilus Orage and Samuel Orage, in Giokoo community, Gokana, were killed by an irate mob. Thereafter, Saro-Wiwa and eight others were killed on 10th November, 1995 by the General Sani Abacha-led regime, despite international pressure mounted on General Sani Abacha to rescind his decision and spared the Ogoni Nine.
Sunrise Of Hope
When two weeks ago I embarked on an assessment visit to Ogoniland, the dark years of the struggle became fresh in my memory. More than any efforts of the past, the Ogoni Clean-up that came to be, following the UNEP Report that conducted independent assessments of the environment and public health impacts of oil contamination in Ogoniland is steadily on course. Over a 14-month duration, with over 4,000 samples collected for analysis from more than 200 sites, 122 kilometres of pipeline rights of way surveyed, more than 5,000 medical records reviewed, among others, revealed Ogoniland as a harsh environment requiring remediation in order to avoid a global ecological disaster.
With the dual mandate of remediating hydrocarbon impacted communities and restoring livelihoods in Ogoniland, the setting up of the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) is restoring hope to the people and recreating the rich biodiversity of the Ogoni people. Not an interventionist agency, HYPREP’s major task is to serve as a healing balm for Ogoniland and further create templates on best options to be adopted in future efforts at cleansing the lands polluted by oil spills. Unlike in the past, Ogoniland is posed to experience a new dawn characterised with renewed hope for the future.
Not Giving Up
Some of the projects carried out by HYPREP include some of its 39 medium risk sites for soil and groundwater remediation at Ajen-Okpori, Eleme. So far, no fewer than 48 lots have been completed and certified by the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA), in the first and second phases of the project. Apart from remedial measures to reclaim the environment, HYPREP also embarked on water projects, in Alesa, Ebubu, Korokoro, Barako, Terabor, Kpean, Bomu, Kporghor, including the construction of a specialist hospital, with an oncology department as a special feature, and the Buan Cottage Hospital in Ken-Khana.
At Goi and Kpor in Gokana, two of the 34 lots for the ongoing shoreline clean-up are being carried out to replant the destroyed mangroves. In the host community for the mangrove project of Bomu, over 1.4 million mangrove seedlings have been planted to recover 560 hectares of lost mangrove areas. Four million seedlings are to be planted in the first phase of the project, while 10 million seedlings are to be planted over the restoration period in a bid to restore lost mangroves to salvage livelihoods for communities and mitigate against climate change. Also under construction and nearing completion is the Centre of Excellence for Environmental Restoration (CEER) that is expected “to serve as a global research hub for environmental restoration, remediation, and pollution control”. The center is expected to be commissioned in July 2025.
HYPREP’s Coordinator, Prof Nenibarini Zabbey, says significant milestone has been achieved, as he noted that the agency is working very hard to address environmental devastation caused by oil spills and at the same time carrying out remedial measures in conformity with the original mandate of UNEP. Considering current efforts being undertaken, there’s no denying the fact that Saro-Wiwa never died in vain. Though the Ogoni Clean-Up is envisaged to cost $1 billion, the current projects being executed by HYPREP is of world standard, and there may be need for a review to deliver without delay.
Simon Reef Musa
Columnist, LEADERSHIP
