ByMichael Eboh
A member of the Board of Trustees of the
Hydrocarbon Remediation Project, HYPREP, Mr. Mike
Emuh, has said that the Federal Government is
planning to engage a foreign firm that would
convert wastes from the soon-to-commence cleanup
of Ogoni land to electricity.
In an interview with Vanguard in Abuja, Emuh, who
is also the National Chairman of Host Communities
of Nigeria Producing Oil and Gas, HOSTCOM, said
the cleanup was yet to commence because of the
issue of the wastes and the search for a suitable
site where it can be dumped for the conversion to
electricity.
He said: “There was also a technical problem, which
is if the cleanup takes up, where would the rubbish
that was cleaned be dumped? Wherever it is
dropped, it becomes toxic and becomes disastrous
to health. Based on that, before the cleanup is
started, you must have a site whereby the
envisaged waste from the cleanup exercise can be
converted to energy.
“This type of arrangement is not yet practised in
Nigeria. Get to Lagos and Kano and see the menace
caused by wastes because of the population. If we
are to carry out the Ogoni cleanup, we must have a
company that would convert the waste to energy.
That would also increase energy in the country.”
Emuh, who is representing oil- producing
communities on the HYPREP Board, said the cleanup
is presently at the demonstration stages and a
number of companies are already at the sites
displaying their competencies.
According to him, the project was delayed because
of issues of locating a site where the wastes can be
dropped for conversion to energy; Nigeria’s
economic recession and challenges in the Niger-
Delta region which hampered Nigeria’s revenue
profile and the inability of the Federal Government
to include the project in the country’s budget in
2016 and 2017.
He said: “The issue of the delay in the cleanup of
Ogoni land, running to two years now, is as a result
of the nature of what the project looks like
scientifically. Africa and Nigeria, specifically is not
used to remediation projects. It has not been done
before in Nigeria.
“In terms of remediation, which is different from oil
spillage cleanup, it has to do with getting back the
original soil. A contractor, who is an expert in that,
had to demonstrate. The demonstration is to prove
that chemicals can be put into the devastated land
and the destroyed ecosystem can be revived and
the original water bodies that had been polluted can
return to its natural state.
“To demonstrate and prove that it can be done
takes over one year, before the chemical can sink
down and produce the result; before the ground
begin to produce the normal plantations for which it
was known for. That is what the contractors have
done.
“There is a little bit of relieve in the country and I
believe that by June, many companies would have
resumed, would have approved contracts for many
companies to resume.”
He maintained that ever since the demonstration
was carried out by the Former Minister of
Environment, Mrs. Amina Mohammed, the project
had commenced, as since then, companies are at
site carrying out demonstrations and are actually
trying to prove the worth of their demonstrations.
He stated that over 80 companies applied for the
cleanup, while only one indigenous company
displayed the required competency to fully
undertake the project.
“Based on the Nigerian Content Act, the contractors
are largely expected to be from Nigeria, but we
discovered that only one indigenous contractor is
qualified, that had what it takes, in terms of its
demonstration at the site. The rest are foreign
contractors.
“To demonstrate is capital intensive. You have to
spend your own money until the contract is
awarded to you. And you have to go for bidding
based on public procurement laws. Those are the
processes that the contractors are going through,”
he noted.
He stated that the Ogoni cleanup was not
appropriated for in the 2016 and 2017 budgets,
noting, however, that the project was included in
the 2018 budget.
https://www.vanguardngr.com/2018/03/waste-ogoni-cleanup-converted-electricity-hostcom/

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