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Civil society groups in Rivers State, under the banner of the Rivers Civil Society Organisations (RIVCSO), on Thursday led a march through the streets of the state capital, Port Harcourt in protest over the continuing emission of soot in the city and its environs.
The emission of soot has for months now become a contentious issue in the state, with some health issues and hazards attributed to the emission that has seemingly refused to go away.
The protest, Thursday, saw the CSOs and residents of the city marching to the gate of the Government House, Port Harcourt, the Rivers State House of Assembly, and the office of the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR).
According to the protesters, “it is time to take action against the soot,” as well as draw “global attention to the poisoning of millions of Port Harcourt residents. We are taking the protection of our health and environment into our own hands!
“No human being should have to live with this level of pollution. Nobody should breathe this soot. But the people of Port Harcourt have no choice. Day in day out, they live in, they breathe, drink and get poisoned by the soot. It is unjust, it is a death sentence,” the group said.
The protesters sang as they marched on. They symbolically covered their noses with masks to indicate what life has become in the city.
The inscriptions on a banner read “Rivers people deserve the right to clean and healthy environment” and “Kick out soot now”.
A list of demands by the CSOs, made available to our reporter, included a call on the local councils in the state to “own their communities and chase out polluters; descend on those polluting their local government areas and charge them to sanitation courts; dedicate a portion of their security vote to fight kpo-fire in their areas; create pollution monitors and whistle blowers, among others.
They also urged the state and federal governments to embark on environmental audit, a deliberate street to street campaign on preventive measures, take stronger measures on the prosecution of oil thieves, fund an update of the UNEP report and the cleanup process as a sign of good faith, declaration of an environmental emergency in Rivers State, among others.
Sami Abel, a senior programme officer with one of the protesting groups, Stakeholder Democracy Network, said what he considers as the cause of the pollution.
“We know that artisanal refining is a problem, but the bigger problem is how the security agencies dispose of the seized products. Instead of them to look for better ways of disposing them, they just set them ablaze and the whole place goes up in smoke,” Mr Abel said while appealing to the federal government and the Rivers State Government to rise up to the challenge of finding a solution to the problem.
Meanwhile, the governor of Rivers, Chief Nyesom Wike, has accused the Federal Government and its agencies of being responsible for the air pollution in the state.
“The Federal Government wants to eliminate a greater percentage of the state (population),” Wike said on Wednesday in Port Harcourt while addressing a visiting delegation from the United Nations.
“The Rivers State Government does not own companies that refine crude. We have made representations to the federal government and her agencies on the issue of soot, to no avail.
“We have called on the security agencies to find more refined ways of destroying the illegal refineries. We have informed the National Council of Environment, the military and all federal regulatory agencies, but they are not interested in intervening,” the governor said.
