As it crossed the Niger Delta in 2021, a satellite imaged acres of bare land. The site outside the city of Port Harcourt was on a clean-up list by the United Nations Environment Programme, to be restored to the green farmland the Delta was before thousands of oil spills turned it into a byword for pollution. Instead, it was left with a sandy “lunar landscape” that could not be used for agriculture, according to UN documents.
It wasn’t the only botched purge, a cache of previously unreported investigations, emails, letters to Nigerian ministers and meeting minutes shows. Senior UN officials deemed the Nigerian clean-up agency a “total failure”.
The agency, the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project, or Hyprep, selected cleanup contractors without relevant experience, a UN review found. It sent soil samples to laboratories that lacked the equipment for tests they had claimed they would perform. Auditors were physically blocked from checking that the work had been completed.
Most cleanup companies are owned by politicians, a former Nigerian environment minister told the AP, and correspondence shows similar views were shared by UN officials.
It wasn’t meant to be like this.
There have been thousands of oil spills since Niger Delta production began in the 1950s. Reports and studies document that people often wash, drink, fish and cook in contaminated water.
Spills still occur frequently. In November, Ogboinbiri community in Bayelsa state was hit by its fourth spill in three months, damaging fields, streams and fisheries.
“We have not harvested anything,” said farmer Timipre Bridget, there is now “no way to survive.”
After a major UN investigation into pollution in 2011, the oil companies agreed to a $1 billion clean-up fund for the worst-hit area, Ogoniland. Shell, the largest private oil and gas company in the country, contributed $300 million. The UN was relegated to an advisory role. The Nigerian government would manage the funds.
But a confidential investigation by UN scientists last year found the site outside Port Harcourt was left with a “complete absence of topsoil”, with nearly seven times more petroleum remaining than Nigerian health limits allow.
The company responsible had its contract terminated, Nenibarini Zabbey, the current director of Hyprep, told the AP by email.
The head of operations when the contract was awarded, Philip Shekwolo, called the allegations in the UN documents “baseless” and “cheap blackmail”. Shekwolo, who used to lead oil spill cleanups for Shell, insists the cleanup was successful.
But the documents show UN officials have been sounding the alarm since 2021, when Shekwolo was acting chief.
A UN review in January 2022 found that 21 of the 41 contractors allowed to clean up spill sites had no relevant experience. These included construction companies and general merchants.
They were effectively given a “blank check,” UN senior project adviser Iyenemi Kakulu said in the minutes of a meeting with Hyprep and Shell. Incompetent companies were guilty of bad truths, Hyprep’s own communications manager, Joseph Kpobari, is on the record as saying. Despite this, they were awarded contracts for more polluted sites, the UN delegation warned.
Zabbey denied Kpobari’s confession. He said 16 out of 20 sites in the project’s first phase are certified clean by Nigerian regulators and many have been returned to communities. Hyprep always issued contracts correctly, he said.
Two sources close to the cleanup effort, who spoke anonymously for fear of losing business or employment, said that when officials visited labs used by Hyprep, they lacked the equipment needed to perform the tests they reported.
In a letter to customers, a UK laboratory frequently used by Hyprep admitted that its tests for most of 2022 were inaccurate and unreliable, and the UK Laboratory Accreditation Service confirmed that the lab had been suspended twice.
Zabbey says Hyprep now monitors contractors more closely, labs follow Nigerian and UN recommendations and are inspected frequently.
The UN also warned the Nigerian government in a 2021 assessment that Hyprep’s spending was not being tracked. Internal auditors were considered “the enemy” and “demonized for doing their job.” Shekwolo’s predecessor as Hyprep boss blocked financial controls and “physically prevented” auditors from checking that work had been completed, it found.
Zabbey replied that the audit team is valued now, and accounts are audited annually, although he only provided an audit letter. In it, “the auditors identified weaknesses.”
A Nigerian politician tried to change things: Sharon Ikeazor spent decades as a lawyer before becoming environment minister in 2019.
“The companies had no skills whatsoever,” she said in a telephone interview.
In February 2022, she received a letter from senior UN official Muralee Thummarukudy, warning of “significant opportunities for malpractice” due to contract awarding, unusually strong language in UN diplomacy. She removed Shekwolo as acting Hyprep chief the next month, declaring she believed he was too close to politicians.
Most of the clean-up companies were owned by politicians, she said. The few competent companies “wouldn’t get the big jobs.”
Shekwolo assessed who was eligible for contract awards, Ikeazor said. Shekwolo’s former employers Shell and the United Nations both warned her about him, she said, something Shekwolo says he was unaware of.
Ikeazor asked Shekwolo’s successor to review all suspicious contracts and investigate the clean-up companies.
“It sent shockwaves around the political class,” she said.
She was quickly replaced as environment minister, with Shekwolo reinstated, after only two months in office.
Shekwolo denied being too close to politicians. He insists there was no reason given for his removal and suggested Ikeazor simply didn’t like him.
Last year, the United Nations Environment Program ended its official involvement in the Nigerian oil cleanup, declaring its five-year consultancy over. Ikeazor said the real reason was the UN’s frustration with corruption, and the two sources close to the project agreed.
Zabbey said he believes the UN just changed its goals and moved on.
