Mkpoikana Udoma
26 April 2018, Sweetcrude, Port Harcourt — The Federal Government says it has identified 11 sources of hydrocarbon soot plaguing Rivers State and its environs.
This comes as the Rivers State Governor, Chief Nyesom Wike, has consistently accused the Federal Government of refusing to cooperate in ending soot in the state.
Speaking while inspecting a health outreach programme organised by HYPREP, in Terabor, Gokana Local Government Area of Rivers State, the Minister of State for Environment, Mr. Ibrahim Jibril, assured that the federal government was committed to ending the incidence of soot in the state.
Jibril explained that he was just coming from a joint stakeholder meeting on the soot organised by NESREA and other stakeholders.
Although the Minister did not disclose the 11 sources of soot identified, he, however, said that an inter-ministerial committee, with members of both Federal and State Government agencies, has been set up to tackle the soot.
According to him, “The Federal Government’s plan is to eliminate the soot by taking concerted actions. We have identified 11 sources that are causing the Soot and having identified them we had to tackle them.
“In the meeting we just had, we have set up an inter-ministerial committee, a standing one not ad-hoc and everybody that needed to be involved must be involved.
“The state ministry of environment, the state ministry of health, state ministry of local government and chieftaincy Affairs are involved.
“Others to be involved are the federal ministry of health, environment, the security agencies are all going to be involved so that together we put our heads and make sure that since we are aware of what was going on, we will now attack the issue from the bottom and make sure that the root cause is eliminated.”
