MOSOP, Ogoni women score HYPREP high in cleanup, livelihood projects 

Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People. MOSOP, and the Federation of Ogoni Women’s Association, FOWA, has scored the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project, HYPREP, high for driving a positive clean-up process of Ogoniland and ensuring livelihood supoort projects for the people.

This came as MOSOP and FOWA inspected key Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) sites across Ogoniland. Speaking during the visit, President, Olu Andai Wai-Ogosu, said the cleanup was a tangible evidence that the long struggle for environmental justice was yielding results.

Wai-Ogosu said many of the projects currently under implementation are direct products of the struggle led by MOSOP over the decades. He said: “Knowing very well that most of the projects that we run today are all products of the struggle which MOSOP led. So it’s very important that we’re having this engagement. The last time we had an engagement with HYPREP, they promised we were going to be taken to project sites. Well, it took so long, but we’re here today.”

Wai-Ogosu described several of the works inspected as signature projects among the wider portfolio of HYPREP activities, particularly praising efforts to restore lost ecosystems along the devastated coastline through mangrove replanting. “Most importantly, the efforts so far that we’ve seen are that HYPREP is trying to bring back some lost ecosystems.

“For all those of us who know what a mangrove ecosystem is, it’s also a source for fisheries, for fish food. They call it seafood. And we are seeing it now that that project is doing well. In the sense that those of us who like to eat seafood, it’s already showing up. It means the system is surviving.”

Ogosu described the provision of potable water as a vital intervention given the contamination of groundwater sources, but cautioned that sustainability challenges go beyond the physical installation of water systems.

While calling for improved communication and community ownership to ensure long-term success, Wai-Ogosu noted that regular intellectual engagement between MOSOP professionals and HYPREP management will strengthen quality assurance.

Meanwhile, the pioneer President of FOWA, Queen Georgiana Tenalu, while recalling her role in the mobilisation women during the early days of the struggle under the late Ken Saro-Wiwa, said freedom has come into Ogoni. Temalu urged youths of Ogoni communities to utilise the opportunities provided through HYPREP to improve their sources of livelihood and better their communities.

He said “we are back in a new Ogoni where there is freedom of speech and freedom of movement. And so I have the freedom to express myself here to say that the Ogoni that I have come to see now in my adulthood, in my womanhood, is different from what I saw as a young lady that led me into those days of protest and suffering in military detention for 56 days.”

However, HYPREP Project Coordinator, Prof. Nenibari Zabbey, described the joint inspection as a landmark moment for both the project and the entire Ogoni people. He said “Today is a great day for the project and for the whole of Ogoni, because we’ve been able to go around our project sites with the leadership of MOSOP, and they are critical stakeholders of the Ogoni clean-up.”

Zabbey stated that the leaders had inspected the sites, observed the progress made and shared their observations. “So we’ve inspected our various sites, and they have seen things by themselves, and they have made their observations, and they have seen the progress that we have made on the clean-up,” he said.