*Govt releases cleanup timetable
OpeOluwani Akintayo
29 April 2018, Sweetcrude, Lagos — The federal government says submission of documents for bidding of contracts for the Ogoni clean-up would end on April 30.
The Minister of State for Environment, Ibrahim Jibril, made this known on Friday while inspecting medical outreach in Terabor General Hospital, Gokana Local Government Area of the state.
His visit to Ogoniland was to check the status of projects on the ground and to assure the people of government commitment to the exercise.
According to him, contract bid for the cleanup will end as a timetable for the clean-up of oil-spill impacted communities in four local government areas of Ogoni land in Rivers is already out.
“The Federal Government is working sequentially to ensure that there is no mistake and that whatever is started would be irreversible, even when President Buhari is out of office.
“We have a complete timetable of our programme now. We have also done an advertisement for people to see what we intend to do”, he said, adding that the ministry would scrutinise all the procurement processes and evaluation, and contract approval before commencement of the cleanup.
“I am sure that people who have interest, capability and capacity to do this clean-up job have submitted their documents.
“The tender of documents will close by Monday, April 30, and thereafter, we will start the evaluation of the expression of interest,’’ he said.
Speaking further, Mr. Jibril assures that the government had also put in place measures to ensure the success of the exercise.