By Obiabin Onukwugha
A non-governmental organisation (NGO), Lekeh Development Foundation, has trained farmers in Bori community, Khana local government area of Rivers State on bioremediation.
The essence of the training, which took place at the Bori community Town Hall on Monday, was to impart knowledge in farmers on steps they could take to preserve their farmlands when pollution occurs while waiting for government agencies to undertake full scale clean up and remediation.
In her presentation, Dr. Chika Nwafor, a lecturer at the Department of Microbiology, University of Port Harcourt (UNIPORT), stated that bioremediation entails the restoration of the soil, where there is pollution. She emphasised the need to prevent pollution and degradation of the environment.
Nwafor mentioned some of the ways that can be used to restore soil nutrients when oil spill pollution occurs to include scooping of the oil, introduction of biostimulants, microorganisms and soil nutrients, amongst others.
She said some of the measures of controlling soil pollution include biological control, chemical control, and physical control.
“Microorganisms are everywhere, in the soil they are there so when these things occur in the environment, when there is an oil spill in the environment normally microorganisms in the environment remediate but to what extent.
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“That is where we try to bring in biostimulation. What are the things we need to add to the soil to help these organisms enhance remediation.
“So we have the nutrients, we have the cow dung. We also consider what are some of these amendments, what do we add to the soil, we have the sawdust, we have the ash,” Nwafor said, explaining, These are things we just add to the soil to amend it then we begin to introduce the nutrients in form of NPK.”
Speaking with journalists after the training, Nwafor pointed out that the training is an innovation where the organisation wants to bring remediation to farmers.
“We told them about the different techniques of bioremediation. We have the physical, that is when you have to scoop and clean, I made them understand that you can use plant to remove pollutants from the soil, we also looked at microbes, that is mushroom for remediation,” She explained.
“We also looked at the microorganisms that is the core remediation, that is the use of indigenous microorganisms to remediate the soil,” she stated.
Also speaking, Executive Director, Lekeh Development Foundation, Friday Mbani, emphasised the importance of healthy soil not to just farmers but the generality of the people.
He said the idea is to promote agroecology knowledge and help restore farmers’ livelihoods across Ogoni. He said the training intends to establish Ogoni Farmers Network.
