The United States government says it is keenly interested in the cleanup of Ogoni land in Rivers State, South-South Nigeria.
The U.S. government also expressed its willingness to partner with the operators of the process for upliftment of people of the affected communities.
The U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria, Stuart Symington stated this during a visit to the headquarters of the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital.
The visit comes barely a week after a team from the United Nations went on an inspection tour of some sites in Kaawa community in Khana Local Government Area of the state.
Mr Symington stressed that while it was important for the people to keep faith with the process, it was equally vital that they see the cleanup exercise as a tool to develop them.
“For me we are committed to the development of the whole country and not just Ogoni land but to see how the story of the cleanup of their land with so much hard work put into it, it is inspiring.
“We’ll continue to be interested and look for ways to partner to drive this process in the area of environmental education, to see that as the land is lifted and the people are also lifted,” he said.
The Project Coordinator, Marvin Dekil also disclosed that new technologies were already being experimented to speed up the process.
“We have started to apply technology at the sites. The site in Kaawa is one of the areas where the technology by one of the companies for the cleanup is being tested.
“We intend to open more sites across the four local governments in Ogoni so that companies who believe they have technology for this project can come forward. We will interact with you, we will assess your technology and allocate to you a suitable site for your kind of technology,” he said.
