HYPREP Reports Progress on Ogoni Clean-up 15 Years On

The Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) Project Coordinator, Professor Nenibarini Zabbey, announced significant progress in implementing the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) recommendations fifteen years after the UNEP report on Ogoniland was released on August 4, 2011. The Federal Government began implementing these recommendations with the launch of the Ogoni Clean-up in 2016, followed by the establishment of HYPREP in 2017.

HYPREP has completed the remediation of thirty polluted sites identified by UNEP and is continuing work at other contaminated locations. The project has planted over 1.5 million mangrove seedlings, described as the world’s largest restoration of oil-degraded mangrove ecosystems.

Additionally, safe drinking water has been provided to forty-nine Ogoni communities, and healthcare projects, including a one hundred-bed Ogoni Specialist Hospital and a forty-three-bed Cottage Hospital, are nearing completion. HYPREP has also empowered thousands of Ogoni youths and women through various programs and created over eight thousand direct jobs, emphasizing the need for continued commitment to environmental restoration.