PH Mundial – Port Harcourt Online Newspaper News Across The Region
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A non-governmental organization, Stakeholders Alliance for Corporate Accountability, SACA, has intensified efforts at training students in Bayelsa State on effects of oil spillages.
Our correspondent learnt that as part of its campaigns against the dangers associated with spills, SACA kick-started and has since concluded a five-day training of pupils and students of both public and private schools in the state.
Port Harcourt Mundial gathered that the training programme, tagged: ‘A 5-day Child Safe Guarding Training of C-club Members from 20 Schools’ had no fewer than 400 students from primary and secondary schools across the state in attendance.
Speaking to journalists after the exercise, executive director, SACA, Mr Kingsley Ozegbe, described the effects of oil spill on pregnant mothers, their foetus and young children as deadly.
He noted that various studies by notable foreign and local agencies have shown that the damages incurred by oil spills on the environment and human life far outweighs the ephemeral gains associated with the multinationals operating in the Niger Delta region.
The executive director hinted that the NGO’s quest towards having an oil spill-free Niger Delta and children safe from the hazards inherent in the event of spills had made SACA to partner the Bayelsa State ministries of Education, Health and Environment for the purposes of fast-tracking the sensitisation campaign against oil spills.
He noted that aside partnering the three government ministries, SACA has had cause to also collaborate with the Catholic Education board as well as the National Association of Proprietors of Private Schools, NAPPS.
He further commended an Irish organization, MISCEAN CARA, for providing funding for the training of the students, adding that this stems from the body’s desire to put to an end to the deadly effects of oil spillages in the Niger Delta.
He said, ‘This training for students was necessitated by MISCEAN CARA of Ireland’s unpretentious desire to partner SACA and other well meaning bodies and individuals towards ending as well as safeguarding children from the effects of spillages.
“In 2016 alone, our reports from findings revealed that more than 16 thousand children died from oil spill because they were born or lived not farther than nine kilometres away from sites of spills.
“SACA therefore, after our last training for child safeguarding officers also had resolved to train 400 students in this programme as the starting processes of taking the sensitisation on the effects of spillages to all our children.
“We’re catching them young, and we believe that children have a special ability in speaking the truth to their playmates, friends, teachers and even parents”.
Similarly, the permanent secretary, Bayelsa State Ministry of Education, Mr Christopher Ewhrudjakpo, the directors for Primary Education/Teachers’ Education and Secondary Education, Mrs Powei Otrofanowei and Mr Osusu Jacob respectively, commended SACA for the awareness it has created amongst students through its various programmes against oil spills.
They described the NGO’s activities as a “no mean feat,” assuring that the Education ministry is willing to partner the organization in taking its sensitization programme to greater heights within the limits of support the ministry can give.
Highpoints of the training were lectures on further effects of spillages on both pregnant women and children, given by Dr (Mrs) Maria Okpomu-keme of the Federal Medical Centre, Yenagoa, and Eng. Singa Iro of the state’s Ministry of Environment.
