Pepple Nnanna, a businessman who spent his childhood in Aba, described what it used to be like.
Mr Cookie-Arm is originally from Rivers State but was born in Aba and has lived in that compound since his childhood. Right inside the river were young boys swimming. The river was largely overtaken by weeds – leaving a small space for the canoe ride as both sides of the river length were a close made by the weeds.Soon, I, with my entourage, went in search of other waste channels from the other companies mentioned.
It was a vast area of serene greenery but a safe habitat for rogues– there laid out-of-use pipes which I was told, belonged to the then Lever Brothers Plc, now Unilever Plc. They were used to flush chemical waste into the river before the company left Aba.“These pipes belonged to the Lever Brothers, whenever they’re in production their waste water usually runs through these pipes straight into the river, sometimes it affects some fish and they die.
From my findings, the people of Ogbor and Eziama communities jointly instituted a lawsuit against one of the companies – the Nigerian Breweries Plc, over the pollution of the river through the discharge of its effluent wastes into the river. Subsequent calls and text messages seeking the confirmation of a new appointment with Mr. Aniukwu were neither answered nor responded to as of the time of this report.
Mr Kalu explained that the presence of the other chemicals found in the water which necessitated its high-level acidity is a result of the effluent wastes from the industries. But who finds pleasure in a hotel on a river bank that on a daily basis, gulps huge volumes of sooty fumes? “They don’t just endanger human lives with roasting those hides with used tyres, they pollute the water and the atmosphere with the blood, cow dungs and the smokes that go into the atmosphere. There should be a government action to end this attack on human life and the environment,” said the public health expert.John Kalu, a clinical biochemist, is the Commissioner for Information, Abia State. He said the state government is aware of all these developments and is doing something about them.
I lived in Aba between 1996 and 2000 and I am very familiar with the areas covered in this report. Even then as a schoolboy it was obvious that the river (which always had a foul smell) was being polluted by the activities of the abbatoir close to the Waterside market.