By Johnbosco Agbakwuru, Abuja
THE Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) has commended the Federal Government for approving a $10 million take-off grant for the implementation of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) Assessment on Ogoniland and reconstituting the Governing Council of the Hydrocarbon Pollution Restoration Project (HYPREP).

ERA/FoEN in a statement yesterday signed by its Executive Director, Godwin Ojo said that the action of government was an indication that President Muhammadu Buhari was on the right path in tackling oil pollution in the Niger Delta.

But he also faulted leaving the HYPREP with the Ministry of Petroleum instead of the United Nations Environmental Programme report that the money should be domiciled with independent body to oversee the cleanup, adding that HYPREP should be scrapped.

The $10 million grant is to begin a set of activities to fast-track the implementation of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) Assessment on Ogoniland.

The statement by the Executive Director of ERA/FoEN commended the Buhari administration for the decision, but cautioned that the HYPREP was still “a contraption” without the backing of the law as it was domiciled under the Ministry of Petroleum.

Ojo said: “We are pleased that the present administration has started taking steps that correspond with its promise that within the first one hundred days in office it will start implementing the recommendations of the UNEP Assessment on Ogoniland.

“While we see a body language indicating the President wants to sincerely tackle the pollution in Ogoniland, we are however not comfortable with the HYPREP which does not have a legal framework backing it which the Ogoni people demand. What the UNEP recommended is an independent body to oversee the implementation of the report.”

The UNEP’s scientific study released in 2011 exposed the large-scale, continued contamination of the water and soil in Ogoniland, and the serious threat this poses to human health. In one case, UNEP found that a community drinking well was polluted with benzene, a cancer causing substance, at levels 900 times above the World Health Organisation guideline.

The report presented to the Goodluck Jonathan administration on 4 August 2011, was however not implemented throu-ghout the life of that administration. Instead, the government hurriedly set up the HYPREP without the consent of the Ogoni people and started awarding projects that did not correspond with the recommendations of the UNEP.