Village leaders in Egbema, Rivers State, have requested assistance from the federal government and an urgent response to the environmental catastrophe unfolding in their neighbourhood.
At a World Environment Day celebration hosted by the Okwuzi Women Development Initiative in the Ogba/Egbema/Ndoni Local Government, one of Rivers State’s major oil and gas producers, the Community Development Committee (CDC) Chairman, Comrade Andy Igwe, led the appeal.
According to Igwe, “Environmental pollution has caused a lot of harm to our traditional occupations such as farming, fishing and hunting”. He recalled nostalgically how fishing “used to be joyful but it is no longer like that”.
“Our farm yields were such that during new yam festivals, pounded yam was eaten for the next three months, from August till October and for richer families till December and only the poorest of the poor dare to cook cassava then seen as a poor man’s food,” he added.
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The gathering’s convener, Peace Mgbenwa, had earlier took the audience on a trip down memory lane in an effort to remind the audience of the situation before the discovery of crude oil in the soil and the current situation.
In her words, “In the past you can drink rainwater, you can plunge yourself into the Orashi River and have a good swim, you can pay your children’s school fees from the catch in your small ponds and creeks, you can sell your raw cassava and have instant cash. All these now seem to be a tale from an ancient movie.
“You have seen what pollution has caused us. Okasi is no more. Fishes have gone into extension. On a recent trip to Ghana, I saw different species of fish, many of which have gone into extinction in Nigeria. Pollution has killed our land. And, for this reason, our household income is shrinking continually. Our land is wasted, we have no land to farm, we cannot even pay our children’s fees to school.”
Story was adapted from Enviro News
