•Bid process competitive and transparent – HYPREP
Former Managing Director, Treasure Energy Limited, Rivers State owned Oil and Gas Company, and former Manager in Shell, Eddie Wikina, has queried the Federal Government’s sincerity in implementing the clean-up in Ogoniland.
Wikina observed the contracts awarded had less than one per cent Ogoni content, wondering how the exercise that involves the whole of Ogoniland would have little or no indigenous participation in its implementation.
Speaking with The Nation on telephone, he noted that the Federal Government through its agency, the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP), had handed over about four of the polluted sites to the contractors that won them.
“But to be honest, there’s a lot of suspicion by the Ogoni people about what the government is doing, but then when you talk to the people in the HYPREP, they will tell you that things are going according to plan,” he added.
According to him, the contracts processes were hijacked by those in authority such that the owners of the land were denied the opportunity to be part of the contracts. Just a little less than one per cent of the contracts belong to Ogoni people, how do you intend to help the people to gain from the exercise, he asked, adding the idea of the whole exercise is to help the people deal with the issues of unemployment and militancy, how does the government want to achieve that, he asked.
Wikina argued the government agency (HYPREP) even though they claimed they did a tendering exercise in choosing their contractors yet all the exercise was done by the Federal Ministry of Environment and they did not give the Ogoni people the opportunity to be part of the tendering exercise.
According to Wikina, the project office should have been located in Port Harcourt where decisions were taken, and not in the Federal Ministry of Environment in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). Again, all the contracting processes should also have been located in Port Harcourt, and tenders open in the state so that if you have any question, you can go to the Port Harcourt office, you don’t have to go to the federal capital.
‘’Also there should be a clause that would specify that a minimum number of contracts should go to the people. There should be specific aspects of the contracts that should be left completely to the Ogoni people, we did that in Shell and it succeeded, he added.
‘’If you give some of these contracts to the Ogoni people, you would have empowered them, and created direct jobs for them and by so doing, most of the boys on the streets would be absorbed directly and get them out of the streets and that would help to reduce militancy in the area, he added.
When you give all the jobs to outsiders in the name of business, they will come with their own group of people because they want their own people, how does that help the owners of the land the exercise is meant for, he asked.
“How do you tell a poor contractor in Ogoni who probably wants to supply sand to go to Abuja to send contract documents, you are not being fair to him, where will he get the money from, that’s why the people are suspicious of what the government is doing,” he said.
‘’When you look at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report, the key things that were recommended were neglected, for example, it was recommended that the government should provide good drinking water in all the areas, they haven’t done that. The government should build a centre of excellence in Ogoniland and they have not done that, and these are the things recommended clearly written in the UNEP report’’.
UNEP, in its report, had recommended that a Centre of Excellence for Environmental Restoration should be established in Ogoniland to promote learning in other areas impacted by oil spills in the Niger Delta. Offering a range of activities and services, the Centre could run training courses in environmental monitoring and restoration and ultimately become a model for environmental restoration, attracting international attention.
However, the Coordinator, HYPREP, Dr. Marvin Dekil, on telephone with The Nation, said the agency was set up following the report of the United Nations Environment Programme. According to him, the reason the UNEP was chosen to do the assessment was because the best international capacity and competence was required to carry out the assessment, adding the recommendations for implementation was also intended to be done by the best international hands as well as the locals.
Dekil said the option of the international competitive bidding was applied while advertising for companies for the clean-up, adding the international option was needed because the people wanted the best hands in the exercise.
“Another key component of the clean-up, he said, was the development of local capacity of the indigenous companies. So what that means is that the local people as well as local companies are trained to prove the competence to carry out the remediation work.
“It means that we have to think of the best strong hands and also train more of the local companies so that subsequent bidding of the project would include more of the indigenous contractors having been trained on the skills.
“The process that brought about the companies we are using is an international competitive process which is also provided by the Nigerian procurement Act of 2007. So, we went through a very robust and transparent process in doing the work and in selecting those companies, again, there’s a provision for training for other local companies to participate in the project”, he explained.
He stressed a proper understanding of the process was required for the people to know that the project was actually intended to empower and train more of the local companies, and local people in the remediation and other deliverables of the project.
Dekil disclosed that HYPREP was also doing training for the youths. According to him, HYPREP had also engaged the youth at different levels with regards to how they could capture the business opportunities that the project provides through training.
He added that the agency would still do more of such training to enable the youth and the business communities in Ogoniland understand the procurement processes as regards their own national loss and the best way they can comply and be involved more in the process.
Meanwhile, HYPREP is a government project and the provision of the procurement law also applies, he stated.