FG fixes August for commencement of Ogoniland clean-up remediation

Ogoni land, polluted with oil spills

The Federal Government, weekend, revealed that the actual remediation exercise for the clean-up of Ogoniland in Rivers State would commence by August ending.

The Minister of Environment, Ibrahim Jubril, disclosed this in Abuja, while addressing journalists ahead of the World Environment Day, WED, coming up tomorrow, with the theme, “Beat Plastic Pollution”.

It will be recalled that the clean-up of Ogoniland was two years ago inaugurated by Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo.

Giving updates on the clean-up, the minister said that advertisement was done in April and  more than 400 contractors indicated interest in the remediation exercise.

According to him, “They have been doing their analysis which is completed now and preliminary figures indicate that about 140 are prequalified.

“These are the ones we will  invite when we finally get the figures, and ask them to submit their financial duty  and that process will continue in the whole of June and July and we hope that by August,  we should be able to get to the Federal Executive Council, FEC, to give approval for whatever remediation contract that would be given.”

Jibril added that “About three weeks ago, the Board of Trustees was able to sign an escrow agreement in the presence of the Vice President. All these are geared towards getting the escrow account to be opened and joint partners, the oil companies and the NNPC, are now at the last stage of populating their account with the amount that will be used for the clean-up process itself.”

  Source Vanguard News