An Environmentalist decries embarrassing state of wastes in Rivers State

An environmental activist,Director of Health of Mother Earth Foundation Dr. Nnimmo Bassey has berated the unhygynic lifestyle of some residents of Port Harcourt. The environmentalist noted that in time past port Harcourt was known as the garden city as it used to be a very clean and attractive place but that the story has changed. He noted that a walk round the city is a showcase of piles of trash at the median of roads. Speaking to our correspondent, the environmental activist said the management of wastes in the State was not receiving the needed attention. " It’s a big problem because it’s not in our character to have city piled with rubbish but then even when the rubbish is parked from the streets where is it taken to? Across the nation we hardly can find any properly designed landfills or waste dump. Because waste dump is not a hole in the bush where you dump rubbish, if you do that the rubbish you are parking to the rubbish dump contains a lot of chemicals and they will leech into the ground water system and contaminate the water that we may get out of boreholes." On the issue of gas flaring, Dr. Bassey said health challenges such as asthma,cancer ,eye problems are as a result of gas flaring explaining that the dangerous toxic elements in gases are not safe for human system. "in fact even the noise itself creates problems to our auditory system. We also have acid rain because of the nitrogen and the Sulphur oxide in the gas, so you have the acid rain affects our crops, affects the roofs when you use colleogated iron sheets to roof the house they get rusty within a few years. So gas flaring is actually dangerous to the environment and to the people and it’s been illegal since 1984, the gas re-injection law of 1979 came to effect on first January 1984. But then the oil and gas companies are given the option of paying a fine and fines are neither here or nor there, because the fine is part of production cost. It’s like government paying to itself but they are not even paying it a lot of it is even being paid so there is no seriousness about stopping gas flaring, last year, the government announced that in couple of weeks to come they would stop gas flaring in2020. 2020 is next year but there is no sign that they will stop gas flaring? Now they are talking about 2030, the announcement for 2020 was there but the climate change policy, but the government national determinants contribution to the PARIS agreement is that gas flaring will stop in 2030, that is too long, it’s too far down the line, so we can’t keep on kicking the kernel down the street instead of taking actions this is the problems, is it because we are making money from oil then we allow people to keep dying." He noted that the life expectancy of the average Niger Delta man has been reduced to 41 years as a result of pollution,noting that people are living on a borrowed time ,which does not tell good of the future as it is an intergenerational problem. Dr Nimmo Bassey said if nothing is done urgently to reduce pollution, more lives will be lost in the Niger Delta Region.