As HYPREP ‘ressurects’ Nigeria’s oil-devastated host communities

In the course of any deep reflection on the fortunes of Nigeria’s petroleum sector, three names define the worst and best faces of the industry. First is Ogoniland, which easily props up to evoke mixed feelings over the country’s history of management of the industry; or rather, the mismanagement of the concomitant environmental degradation with […]

In the course of any deep reflection on the fortunes of Nigeria’s petroleum sector, three names define the worst and best faces of the industry. First is Ogoniland, which easily props up to evoke mixed feelings over the country’s history of management of the industry; or rather, the mismanagement of the concomitant environmental degradation with associated devastation of farmlands and economic livelihood of the host communities. The second is Ken Saro Wiwa, whose advocacy for the environmental rights of the Ogoni provided significant push for the community’s cause to the global stage. The third with a rather recent entry into the Nigerian petroleum sector is the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP), which is playing a game-changing, pollution remediation role. 

Whereas petroleum production serves the country as the goose that lays the golden egg by significantly boosting the country’s revenue base, the industry, as a resource extraction-based enterprise, also has a darker side as a generator of massive pollution and environmental degradation.

For Nigeria, so pervasive had been the incidence of mismanagement of environmental degradation that it almost defined the character of the country’s industry. And it is in that respect that Ogoniland, courtesy of its plight of negligence and mistreatment, which was much more severe than most other oil- producing locations in the country, easily qualifies as the metaphor that represents some of the ugly faces of Nigeria‘s oil and gas industry. Just as well is HYPREP coming in as the game changer for ‘resurrecting’ Nigeria’s devastated oil and gas fields, with its superlative enterprise in Ogoniland.    

With respect to the environmental degradation of host communities, three factors accentuate the status of Ogoniland as the metaphor in the narrative of Nigeria’s petroleum industry. First is the sheer scope of the devastation of the community’s environment being one of the earliest host communities to the industry, in the country.

Whereas Oloibiri in the present day Bayelsa State is credited with Nigeria’s first commercially viable oil well by Shell Darcy, which started production on January 15 1956, Bomu in Ogoniland also shares the history of earliest oil production locations, as its first well was drilled in 1958. Eventually hosting a pipeline manifold, which is an intersection of several oil pipelines, Bomu is also recorded as one of the worst hit oil locations in the country as far as pollution is concerned. To accentuate that fact is that Bomu had suffered several operational mishaps over the years, including the 1970 oil well blow-out and resulting fire, which burnt for days and devastated the surrounding Boobanabe community farmlands. This was just as Shell incurred an 80 million pound fine from the court. Other oilfield mishaps also followed in Bomu and other locations.

The second factor accentuating Ogoniland as a metaphor in the Nigerian petroleum industry is the spirited advocacy driven by the late environmental rights activists – Ken Saro Wiwa of Ogoni extraction – who was killed in 1995 by the General Sani Abacha military regime. In many respects, it was his killing for strident advocacy for recognition of Ogoni rights that spawned the Nigerian government’s turnaround to more humane management of the country’s oil and gas sector.

Through his activism on the platform of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) and a globalised media campaign, which demonised both the Nigerian government and international oil giant, Shell, global attention to the Ogoni cause was triggered. By 1993, Shell was stopped from producing oil in the whole of Ogoniland, And by 1995, Ken Saro Wiwa was killed by hanging, courtesy of the General Sani Abacha-led military junta.  

The death of Ken Saro Wiwa spawned so intense a global reaction which snowballed into an official intervention by and subsequent report on the Ogoni environmental challenge by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP). So also was born the ‘Ogoni Clean Up’ campaign as defined by the recommendations of that UNEP report. Consequently too, such provided the premise for HYPREP’s enterprise, which offered the promise of mitigating extreme instances of abandonment of oil pollution impacted communities without remedy. 

Established in 2011, HYPREP has over the years proven to have achieved and even surpassed its initial mandate, as well as expanded its services to include the  provision of some basic welfare services, such as potable water supply through a network of modern water works and medical facilities. This additional angle was justified by its project coordinator and chief executive officer, Professor Nenibarini Zabbey as a gesture at restoring the livelihood of the communities. 

Put succinctly, it would seem that with the HYPREP, life after whatever devastation that may have occurred in any impacted oil production location is possible. And the agency’s operations in Ogoniland prove that point.

Going forward with respect to sustaining the game changing role of HYPREP, the challenge lies in two directions. First is the intensification of the Ogoni Clean Up’ enterprise through more support by the federal governments beyond its current level of financial commitment, especially as the project is under the supervision of the Federal Ministry of Environment, just as environmental remediation constitutes a legal obligation of the federal government. Second is that the successful work by HYPREP in Ogoniland offers an inspiration to other impacted communities in the oil-producing areas of the country, with expectation building in them over also benefitting from the remediation programme. 

In the same vein, the HYPREP exercise is running at a time the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA 2021) has been enacted with its elaborate provisions for oil and gas operations host communities. The need therefore exists to harmonise both dispensations of HYPREP and the PIA in order for the country to operate a standard oil pollution remediation protocol that is consistent with world best fit processes.