Stakeholders and other experts have raised alarm that there could be astronomical rise in cases and casualties of COVID-19 in Ogoniland over the failure to carry out a health audit before the pandemic outbreak in the country.
A panel of frontline environmental rights activists and leaders of civil society organisations (CSOs) raised the alarm during a virtual meeting hosted by Kebetkache, a non-profit organisation focusing on woman empowerment and grassroots development.
The virtual conference featured discussions on “Role of Women in the clean-up exercise” as well as community response and general overview of the progress made in the clean-up.
According to them, the failure by the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) to carry out a health audit in Ogoniland before commencing the clean-up process two years ago, is a major source of worry.
They said that skipping the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) emergency measures, including a health audit of the four affected local government areas, could cause more deaths, given the high prevalence of underlying diseases in communities from long years of pollution.
Frontline environmental activist, Nnimmo Bassey who led a panel, expressed concern in his lead presentation, that the clean-up exercise was proceeding too slowly in spite of available funding for the exercise.
“The additional issues faced by the Ogoni People are related to the extreme pollution they live with. COVID-19 requires that people wash their hands under running water. This cannot be done with contaminated water in Ogoniland. Secondly, the symptoms of the COVID-19 include breathing disease, these are exactly the conditions that people exposed to hydrocarbon pollutions live with,” Bassey, who is also the founder, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), said.
On his part, National Coordinator, Ogoni solidarity Forum, Comrade Celestine Akpobani, however, commended HYPREP for the feat achieved so far in the implementation process.
According to him, it required a lot of struggles to speed up the process of the project, due to heavy community influence on the project and urged the HYPREP to step up communication to ensure that both community and stakeholders are carried along in the processes.
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