…Plants trees at Bomu shoreline
By: Felix Ikpotor
Some Frontline civil society organisations in the Niger Delta has given Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project, HYPREP, a pass mark on its effort at remediating oil impacted sites in Ogoniland.
The CSOs gave the remark after their onsite visit to Bomu shoreline in Gokana local council of Rivers State where HYPREP has successfully remediated the environment and are replanting mangroves.
The visit was part of activities for the Civil Society Dialogue on HYPREP.
Speaking shortly after planting a tree at the Bomu waterfront, Founder of Home of Mother Earth Foundation, HOMEF, Rev’d Nnimmo Bassey, expressed delight at the fact that mangroves are now growing at the waterfront which he said signifies that alot of work has been done.
He stated that visiting the waterfront was an eye-opener for the civil society organisations on the work HYPREP is doing in Ogoniland.
“Coming to Bomu waterfront is a very important revelation about the level put in place by HYPREP working with the community as well as the contractors.
” It shows clearly that something positive is happening and the environment is gradually returning to it’s normal state and this is very critical in terms of the whole efforts of HYPREP because if you tell us you’ve cleaned the swamp, cleaned the land and water and nothing grows then that would be a lie. Now we’ve seen that the mangroves planted earlier are thriving,” he stated.
Speaking on the job the agency was carrying out on the site, Bassey said he was impressed that there was no traces of oil on the suffer surface indicating that HYPREP was doing something positive on the site.
“The job HYPREP is doing is graded in different areas. There are some that are simple sites, some are complex sites and this is not a simple site because cleaning pollution in swamp is very complex. So they have done a lot of work to get to this stage because you can’t plant mangrove in a land that’s soaked with crude oil.
“I particular looked at the water and I didn’t see traces of oil and this is physical observation and not scientific which is very important because this is how communities can see things for themselves. I didn’t see any coat of oil on the water and I think by that measure, something positive has happened,” he added.
Bassey, however said that civil society organisations, they would continue to hold HYPREP by their words to ensure that they do the right thing in the sites.
“What civil society is going to do to help HYPREP is to hold them by their terms. If they say they have done anything, we would make sure we see that it has been done and if they have not done it, we will say they have not done it because HYPREP must be part of the community and we operate as members of the community, we are embedded in the community and we speak with the voice of the communities,” he said.
The environment rights activist further urged HYPREP to be responsive to the community by engaging more local labour on its sites, saying: ” They must engage with the communities and that’s why we are happy that the nurseries that produced this mangroves are managed by women from the communities and so we just want to see more engagement and utilisation of local labour”.
On her part, Dr Emem Okon, Director, Kebetkache Women Development and Research Centre, said she is impressed with the quantity of mangroves that has been planted in the area, calling of all stakeholders to join hands to make the restoration project a success.
“I’m impressed because we have been informed that more than one million mangroves have already been planted and more is going to be planted. I would like to call on people like activists, community members to also contribute to planting the mangroves as they would be promoting the mangrove restoration,” she said.
She particular expressed satisfaction at the level of women engagement in the restoration exercise.
“I’m also impressed that women are participating in this mangrove restoration because we have been told that it is women that are managing the nurseries that are producing the trees that we have planted. I’m happy that I have the opportunity to contribute to the mangrove restoration because I have been an advocate of the clean-up of the Niger Delta and I’m still advocating that more polluted areas in the Niger Delta should be cleaned up,” Okon said.
She also promised to mobilise over 100 Niger Delta women to plant atleast 300 mangroves in the area.
Earlier, Celestine Akpobari, Convener of the Civil Society Dialogue on HYPREP said the activity was carried out as part of events marking the heroes week, which is a week set aside to honour late environmental right activists, Ken Saro-Wiwa and other martyrs all over the world.
He said the tree planting was symbolic as it serves as measures to help restore the environment, adding that if trees are not planted the environment would soon go into extinction.
Akpobari used the medium to advice people from the community to take ownership of HYPREP projects on their land as they are the greatest beneficiaries of the interventionists projects being carried out by the agency.
