INTERESTING INTERVIEW: WHY JONATHAN COULDN'T IMPLEMENT UNEP REPORT ON OGONI - MPIGI

INTERESTING INTERVIEW: WHY JONATHAN COULDN'T IMPLEMENT UNEP REPORT ON OGONI-MPIGI Gbenekanu Ledornu Mpigi is a staff of the Hydrocarbon Pollution Restoration Program, (HYPREP) and a PhD research student in University College, London. He explains the difficulties his team faced in the agency in the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan and other related issues in this interview with DANIEL ABIA. Excerpts: How will you rate the first year of the APC as the ruling political party in Nigeria? I will approach this question from a professional point of view. In international development, especially when you are using sustainable livelihood approach framework to analyse cases and to have it smooth and flourishing then the policies, institutions and processes (PIP) must have been well tightened. This president inherited a system that was loose. Impunity was in virtually all the sectors and Nigerians were not even trusting machines not to talk of each other. That is why you will see someone in front of the ATM after collecting his money, he stands there and count the money to be sure the machine paid him accurately. It was as bad as that. Building a new house to your taste is simpler than renovating an old house to your taste. Here is a man that inherited governance from a government that was in power for 16 years and in Nigeria, once the same party takes over from the same party, you don’t hear of ‘my predecessor looted the treasury’. It is only when there is a change as we are seeing at the federal level and some states where change happened. Just imagined what would have been of us if there was not change at the federal level. Sincerely, the government at the centre headed by President Buhari has done well from my professional view by putting in structures that will enable it thrive once they start implementing the budget that was signed into law few weeks back. If anyone wants to judge the government, I will suggest that should happen after the first budget has been implemented. Generally, I think Nigerians will be very proud of this government once all the structures they are putting in place start manifesting. Imagine how the subsidy removal was handled and Nigerians don’t need sleep in the filling station queues again. Think of the Treasury Single Account, TSA, the new job portal that the ministry of labour just opened for graduate and non-graduate jobs. These are policies that will add value to human lives and Nigeria will be great again. I sincerely rate the performance of the government in the first year high and urge my fellow Nigerians to support this government. You are a staff of HYPREP, what were some of the challenges that you faced in the course of your duty? I am a research fellow in Development Planning Unit where I am interested in urban poverty reduction because I have discovered that poverty reduction strategies in Nigeria have never targeted urban poverty at all from the days of structural adjustment programme of the 1980s to the SURE-P of the 2014. I am still a staff of HYPREP. HYPREP came into being with a simple mandate of restoring the livelihood of people that have been affected by hydrocarbon exploration activities in Nigeria and as such the best hands in different units were recruited and I happened to be one of the recruits. Some people grow up and see ahead and work towards it. The leaders of Ogoni saw beyond their nose and put together the Ogoni bill of rights which every Ogonis that were born before 1993 when it was launched subscribed to. Few weeks into my PhD programme in the University College London was when the opportunity to work for HYPREP came up and I have to put my research on hold and returned home to work for HYPREP and the rest is history which my colleagues and I can write so many books on. Some of the challenges we had were insincerity of the government of the day towards the project, lack of funds, staff’s welfare not prioritize, work environment not made adequate must especially the Bori office which I was heading at some time. I was virtually running the affairs of the office from my pocket with the hope that I can retire my expenses which are yet to be retired till date. Do you think the federal government is sincere about the cleanup of the Ogoni environment following the flag off by President Muhammadu Buhari on June 2? Yes, I sincerely think the federal government is sincere about it. First, they identified that this issue is more about the environment and as such moved the HYPREP from the Federal ministry of petroleum resources where it was under the former federal government with a very busy minister with lots of engagement from OPEC to running of NNPC and federal cabinet meeting. I think the Ogoni UNEP report was the least among her scale of preference. What has this new government done? The president made a promise to the Ogonis on his campaign tour that if he wins the election he will implement the report. He didn’t say that through his campaign team but his mouth and he was on national TV and every man of reputation lives by their spoken words and we all know the president for this. From the numerous visits of the Hon. Minister of environment who is the coordinating minister of this project to her various interactive sessions with stakeholders down to the formal launch of the project shows that there is a political will and sincerity on the part of the federal government to fulfill its promise to the Ogonis. What do you think was responsible for the former President Goodluck Jonathan not to muster enough political will to implement the UNEP report on Ogoni? I think three things played out here. The first was bad advisers who don’t love Ogoni people though they claim they were Ogonis one way or the other. If you are working with the president or a friend of the president and matters as serious as this is before him then you are not able to advice and convince him beyond every reasonable doubt that he needs to do the needful, then you are either not worth being there or you do not have Ogoni at heart. The second is that the president didn’t have a foresight, he didn’t see ahead of him. Implementing this report was a great political tool that would have shut so many mouths but he played into the hands of his political enemies who capitalized on his weak point and scored a vital point. How can you sit there as a president from one of the creeks among the creeks of Niger Delta and there is a paper in front of you that these people, your people are dying daily from adverse effect of crude oil exploration and exploitation which you have witnessed and you have a second thought before signing such document. The third thing that made the former federal government headed by Jonathan not to implement the report is greed and envy. Why did I say so? We started well. We had the organogram of HYPREP set in place, offices were up and running in Abuja, Port Harcourt and Bori though not without logistical lapses as a result of the inability of this same federal government not to approve the budget of HYPREP. How can you explain to the people of Ogoni that on the eve of the formal handover of assets held by UNEP to HYPREP there will be a counter order from the presidency that the national coordinator and the number two and three in HYPREP rank have to proceed to Bayelsa to take-over the office donated to HYPREP by the former president’s campaign team. Was it that the former presidency wanted to build in the Bayelsa project that study has not carried out into the Ogoni project? Was that why the Ogoni project was not funded? Were there something happening that we were not aware of considering that the Minister of petroleum and the President were from Bayelsa and she was the coordinating minister? As sad as it may be they went to Bayelsa, took over the office and left some of our colleagues there as Bayelsa office staff and on their way back there was an accident that resulted in the death of three HYPREP staff. One was a PhD holder from the east who obtained his PhD in USA thirty seven years ago and have lived all his life there but was recruited home like most of us to contribute to the development of Source The Independent