AP: Leaked UN Files Show Nigerian Agency Failed to Clean Up Ogoni Despite $1bn Funding

Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja

Despite the provision of $1 billion funding for the Ogoni cleanup exercise in Rivers state, the federal government agency set up to carry out the exercise ‘failed completely’ to carry out the mandate for years, a report by the Associated Press, quoting leaked United Nations documents, has indicated.

The site, outside the city of Port Harcourt, was on a cleanup list kept by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and was supposed to be restored to green farmland as the Delta was before thousands of oil spills turned it into a byword for pollution.

Instead, the AP report pointed out that the land was left a sandy “moonscape” unusable for farming, according to UN files, with emails, letters to Nigerian ministers and minutes from meetings obtained by the news agency showing senior UN officials increasingly concerned that the Nigerian agency had been a “total failure.”

The agency, the Hydrocarbons Pollution and Remediation Project (HYPREP), selected cleanup contractors who had no relevant experience, according to a UN review, AP said,  sending soil samples to laboratories that didn’t have the equipment for tests they claimed to perform.

In addition, auditors were physically blocked from making sure work had been completed, while a former Nigerian minister of the environment told the AP that the majority of cleanup companies are owned by politicians, and minutes showing similar views were shared by UN officials.

There have been thousands of crude oil spills in the tidal mangroves and farmlands of the Niger Delta since oil drilling and production began in the 1950s, with crude leakages still occurring frequently till date.

After a major UN survey of spills more than a decade ago, oil companies agreed to create a $1 billion cleanup fund for the worst affected area, Ogoniland, and Shell, the largest private oil and gas company in the country, contributed the lion’s share. The Nigerian government handled the funds and the UN was relegated to an advisory role.

To oversee the work, the government created HYPREP, which was first meant to address sites that were supposed to be easy to clean, like the one outside Port Harcourt. Then it would move on to complex ones, where oil had sunk more deeply into the ground.

But a confidential investigation by UN scientists last year, the AP report said, found the site outside Port Harcourt was left with a “complete absence of topsoil” and almost seven times more petroleum in the subsoil than Nigerian health limits.

The company that performed that work has since had its contract revoked, Nenibarini Zabbey, the current Director of HYPREP, who took over last year, told the AP.

The head of operations when the contract was awarded, Philip Shekwolo, called allegations in the UN documents “baseless, mischievous and cheap blackmail.”

Shekwolo, who used to head up oil spill remediation for Shell, said by email to AP that he knows more about tackling pollution than any UN expert and insisted the cleanup had been successful.

But the documents show UN officials raising the alarm about HYPREP with Nigerian officials since 2021. A January 2022 UN review found that of 41 contractors allowed to clean up spill sites, 21 had no relevant experience. Not one was judged competent enough to handle more polluted sites.

They include Nigerian construction companies and general merchants. The websites of two construction firms, for example, make no mention of pollution cleanups.

In the minutes of a meeting with UN officials, the UN delegation warned that despite their inadequate work, these companies were being rewarded with contracts for tougher sites.

But a HYPREP Director, Zabbey, insisted that the  cleanup of the simple sites was not a failure, stressing that 16 out of 20 had been certified as clean by Nigerian regulators and many returned to communities. Hyprep always complied with guidelines when issuing contracts, Zabbey said, and their monitors were UN-trained.

Two sources close to the cleanup efforts in the Delta, speaking anonymously for fear of loss of business or employment, told AP thG the test results held up by HYPREP as proof of cleanup could not have been real because when officials visited the laboratories, they found they did not have the equipment to perform those tests.

In a letter to its customers, one laboratory in the UK frequently used by HYPREP acknowledged its tests for most of 2022 were flawed and unreliable. The UK laboratory accreditation service confirmed the lab’s authorisation to carry out the tests was suspended twice.

Zabbey defended the cleanup agency in a statement to the AP, saying it monitors contractors more closely now. Labs adhere to Nigerian and UN recommendations and are frequently checked, he said, and the UN could have trained local lab staff if it chose to.

However, the UN cited another problem — contractors were allowed to assess pollution levels at their sites. No government agency was setting a baseline for what needed to be cleaned up at oil-damaged sites.

This, it said, meant companies were monitoring their own progress, effectively handing a “blank check,” UN Senior Project Advisor, Iyenemi Kakulu, is recorded as having said in minutes of a meeting in June of last year between the UN, HYPREP and Shell.

The U.N. warned the Nigerian government in an assessment in 2021 that spending at the cleanup agency was not being tracked. Internal auditors were viewed as “the enemy” and “demonised for doing their job.”

Zabbey said this too, has changed since that assessment: The audit team is now valued, he said, and accounts are now audited annually, although he provided only one audit cover letter. In it, the accounting firm asked what steps had been taken to “correct the identified weaknesses.”

It further quoted Sharon Ikeazor who was appointed environment minister of Nigeria in 2019, as saying : “There wasn’t any proper remediation being done,” she said. “The companies had no competence whatsoever,” she added.

In February 2022, she received a letter from senior UN official Muralee Thummarukudy, with what experts say is unusually strong language in diplomacy. It warned of “significant opportunities for malpractice within the contract award process,” in the Nigerian oil cleanup work. Ikeazor removed Shekwolo as acting chief of Hyprep the next month, explaining that she believed he was too close to the politicians.

The “majority” of cleanup companies were owned by politicians, she said. The few competent companies “wouldn’t get the big jobs.”

One of Shekwolo’s roles, Ikeazor said, was to determine who was competent for contract awards. Ikeazor said Shekwolo’s former employer Shell and the UN warned her about him, something Shekwolo says he was unaware of.

When she hired a new chief of HYPREP , she had him review every suspect contract awarded over the years and investigate the cleanup companies.

“That sent shockwaves around the political class,” said Ikeazor. “They all had interests.”That was when the battle started,” she said.

It was a short battle, and she lost. She was replaced as environment minister and Shekwolo was rehired. He had been gone for two months.

However, Shekwolo told AP the only politicians he was close to were the two environment ministers he served under. He was never given a reason for his removal, he said, and suggested Ikeazor simply didn’t like him.

Last year, the report said UNEP broke ties with the Nigerian oil spill agency, explaining its five-year consultancy was over. The last support ended in June.

While Ikeazor said the real reason the UN pulled out was frustration over corruption, Zabbey responded that he believes the UN merely changed its goals and moved on.