Youths protest in Port Harcourt over poor state of East-West road

By Nneka Nwogwugwu

Some youths have shut down the Eleme axis of the East-West road in Port Harcourt, protesting the poor state of the road.

The Eleme youths while protesting on Monday, blocked the road at Akpajo, Refinery Junction and Trailer Park ends of the road and stopped motorists from using the road.

A protester lamented that youths are not happy over the poor state of the road despite donations of sums of money from companies.

The protester said that big industries like Port Harcourt Refinery Company, Eleme Petrochemical/Indorama, Nigeria Ports Authority and among others are located along the East-West road, adding that they make huge profits yet none of them cares about the road.

NatureNews gathered that last month, a portion of a popular Akpoju/Aleto bridge along Eleme/Ogoni axis of East/West road collapsed.

It collapsed barely 48 hours after Ogoni youths staged a peaceful protest of the deplorable state of the road.

The youths, who demonstrated under the aegis of Ogoni Youth Federation of (OYF), gave the Federal Government 14-day ultimatum to remobilise contractors to site or face indefinite blockage of the road.

Also, the Ogoni People’s Assembly (OPA) early this month gave the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Senator Godswill Akpabio, 14 days to commence work at the deplorable Eleme-Onne section of the East-West Road or face protest.

The indigenes the said the road was initially included among the list of projects funded by the Presidential Infrastructure Development Fund (PIDF) to facilitate its timely completion.

The Leader of the group, Probel Williams, had asked Akpabio to either return the road to the PIDF or look for money to begin the project within the 14-day ultimatum starting from July 7th.

This has followed the protest at Eleme where protesters expressed displeasure over the Federal government’s failure to respond to them.