N150bn, 30 yrs to clean Ogoni oil spill/ http://www.naijaworldnews.com/

It will takes N150bn, 30 yrs to clean Ogoni oil spill

The Presidential Committee on Environmental, Survey and Clean-up of Ogoniland submitted its report after two years of investigations and indicted both the Federal Government and the Royal Dutch Shell Petroleum Development Company, SPDC, with a declaration that N150 billion was required to clean up the contaminated area.
Chief Dr. Goodluck Jonathan who received the report of the committee yesterday in Abuja declared that oil pollution was worse than a civil war and appealed to the United Nations, UN, to come to the aid of Nigeria.
For over a decade, Ogoni activists drew the attention of the world to the environmental degradation of the area resulting from oil exploration without concern for the well-being of the people and the environment; which led to the invitation of United Nations Environment Programme, UNEP, by former President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2004.
The committee, headed by Most Rev. Matthew Kukah, which collaborated with UNEP, led by Director Environmental Policy Implementation, Mr Ibrahim Thiaw, admitted that all samples taken from the air, water and soil in over 200 locations in the area showed that Oganiland has Hydrocarbon materials hanging in the air and floating layers of oil that makes it unsafe for human habitation
The report stated that while individual lands in Ogoni Land may be cleaned up within 5 years, it will certainly take up to 30 years to clean up the rest of the area.
Jonathan said as a committed member of the UN, Nigeria has committed both her financial and human lives to the restoration of peace globally; and it is therefore important that the UN assist with both material and human resources to avoid imminent global catastrophe in Nigeria.

He said “the case study will also help us not only to redress the Ogoni problem but also to look into other parts of this country where oil exploration and production have been going on over the period. For the Federal Government, we have to thank you for this work and I assure you we will look into the report. I will call all the key stakeholders involved for us to look into it and see what we can do base on the clear recommendations provided”.
“I am using this opportunity to call on UN and UNEP to see that Nigeria is a committed member and we have paid our dues in terms of solving world and regional problems, we have participated in peace keeping, we have invested financial resources and lives of our citizens to bring peace to the world. So, I believe in these days of environmental wars, the UN will come to our aid”.
According to him, “the environmental challenges we have are severe. Environmental challenges we have are more critical because pollutant can migrate to other places we don’t expect. So, in addition to helping us to conduct this study, I call on UNEP to assist us to redress this problem. It will not be easy to set up the institutions in the recommendation and run them and expect a good result without the assistance of the UN”.
He promised that “the Nigerian government is going to discuss with Shell and other companies operating in the areas and other relevant government agencies to see how we can handle this report. But let me assure you that we are not going to put this report in our drawers but we are going to act on it and you will surely know about”.
“I most first of all thank the Ogoni people for allowing UNEP to conduct the studies. Today we are happy that a comprehensive study on Ogoniland has been conducted on the whole of Ogoniland as a key study of the situation in the Niger Delta”.
Earlier, Bishop Kukah had urged President Jonathan to commence his government’s transformation agenda in Ogoniland by mobilising resources to the area for social and infrastructural development.
Kukah disclosed that “while the report provides clear operational recommendations for addressing the widespread oil pollution across Ogoniland, UNEP recommends that the contamination in Nisisioken Ogale warrants emergency action ahead of all other remediation efforts”.

According to the report, the environmental restoration of Ogoniland could prove to be the world’s most wide-ranging and long term oil clean-up exercise ever undertaken if contaminated drinking water, land, creeks and important ecosystems such as mangroves are to be brought back to full, productive health.
“A major new independent scientific assessment, carried out by the UNEP, shows that pollution from over 50 years of oil operations in the region has penetrated further and deeper than many may have supposed.
The assessment has been unprecedented. Over a 14-month period, the UNEP team examined more than 200 locations, surveyed 122 kilometres of pipeline rights of way, reviewed more than 5,000 medical records and engaged over 23,000 people at local community meetings”.