The Save Our Ogoni Project has expressed deep concern over what it considers to be the secrecy and clear lack of openness and consultations going on within HYPREP, saying it portends real danger to peace in Ogoniland and to the $200 million recently released by Shell for the Ogoni cleanup.

Aalo Anthony, Coordinator of the group in a statement issued on Monday expressed the belief that the Governing Council and particularly the project coordinator, Dr. Marvin Dekil, hold offices in trust for the Ogoni people and therefore are obliged to report back to the people.

The statement reads: “On the finances of HYPREP, we have lost confidence in the leadership of HYPREP and suspect that the $200 million paid by Shell may have been deposited in a private account instead of being kept in the Ogoni Trust Fund. We therefore demand that the Ogoni public should be briefed and notified on the state of the fund.

“We are concerned about the secret recruitment of youths for oversees training drawn from a particular political party affiliation and the failure of accountability within HYPREP while the organisation hastily appears to be engaged in activities that only suggest attempts to justify its reckless spending patterns.

“It would be recalled that the Federal Government has earlier approved $10 million for the funding of HYPREP secretariat that has not functioned.

“The Save Our Ogoni Project therefore demands that the project coordinator, Dr. Marvin Dekil, should make his work plan public, disclose the state of the finances of HYPREP for Ogoni cleanup and cancel the partisan list of trainees he has already drawn,” the group demanded.

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