The Federal Government has announced that there will be an health audit of Ogoni people, to ascertain the needed interventions to be done in the area.

The Minister of State for Environment, Sharon Ikeazor, disclosed this yesterday at a one-day stakeholders’ engagement programme on the cleanup of Ogoniland, held in Bori, Khana Local Government Area of Rivers State.

Ikeazor, who assured the people that the Ministry of Environment will continue to engage the people of Ogoni communities, disclosed that the youths of Ogoniland would be engaged on environmental surveillance of ongoing HYPREP cleanup sites.

She appealed for collaboration with all stakeholders to make the cleanup project a success.

We will carry out a health audit of Ogoni people, to ascertain the effect of prolong exposure to hydrocarbon on the people, in order to determine the kind of interventions that needs to be done.

You call it security but I call it environmental surveillance. So we are going to engage Ogoni youths on environmental surveillance, to protect all the sites we’re cleaning. No one can protect the sites more than the people. The more we have our young people securing theses sites, the better for us.

For advertisements of contracts, i have made sure that due process will be followed. The bids will be open to all qualified Nigerians

We might have to look at other sites that are contaminated, so that ones we finished the cleanup, we know that we have finished every thing, not just cleaning the polluted sites that are under our scope while there are still other areas that are contaminated.

My goal is to ensure that the cleanup project is owned by the Ogoni people and that more indigenous people acquire the required skills and ability to participate in this cleanup.

I have given the go ahead to the Project Coordinator for advertisement for setting up of the integrated soil contamination centre as well as the centre of excellence and I hope it will come up in the next one year.

Earlier, the Chairman of Ogoni Supreme Council of Traditional Rulers, HRM King Godwin Gininwa, called for the establishment of a University of Environment in Ogoniland to serve as the Centre of Excellence as recommended in the UNEP report.

King Giniwa also called for speed on the pace of the ongoing cleanup exercise.

We will cooperate with you to make the project a success. However, our people have suffered enough, therefore they should be made to benefit from the project in terms of jobs, contracts. Ogoni people should be considered first when awarding contracts.

A stakeholder, Ledum Mitee, called for employment of youths in the project as well as training of Ogoni youths on skills for the project.

Money spent on security should be channeld into youth employment. Ogoni youths should be employed to secure HYPREP project sites.

Justin Nwosu

Justin Nwosu is the founder and publisher of Flavision. His core interest is in writing unbiased news about Nigeria in particular and Africa in general. He’s a strong adherent of investigative journalism, with a bent on exposing corruption, abuse of power and societal ills.