Once a flourishing 'Garden City', Port Harcourt has now become a victim of ecological disaster
The problem of Port Harcourt in southern Nigeria became an issue of public discussion when black soot first became visible around 2016.
Black soot – the result of incomplete combustion of crude oil – hung in the air and formed a thick layer everywhere, from homes to humans. It was a period when illegal refining became rampant in the Niger Delta area, particularly in the coastal swamps of Port Harcourt. As of January 2023, Nigeria was back at the top, but only after authorities intensified efforts to trace and dismantle illegal taps. “It was as if someone had sprinkled ash everywhere inside my house, on my bed-net. I remember touching it and asking myself, ‘what is this?’,” he says.
Forty-eight-year-old Tunde Bello became an accidental environmental activist when he created a Facebook page, and the Twitter handleHis inbox was filled with pictures sent in by residents, showing soot in their homes. Many took shots of their blackened hands and feet. Some of the citizen videos captured footage of soot nearly obliterating daylight and masking the city in a dense fog.
Nigeria is one the top oil producers in the world. But some of the resources are lost to criminals in the oil producing communities. Within a month of the campaign, as public pressure grew on the authorities to act, the Rivers State government set up a task force to address the issue. The group officially identified the mysterious particle as black soot. “Black soot is the by-product of incomplete combustion,” says Dr. Selegha Abrakasa, a particle physicist at the University of Port Harcourt.
Professor Best Ordinioha, a public health specialist at the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital, tells TRT Afrika that soot could trigger deadly allergic reactions. Over 100 illegal refinery sites were destroyed in different locations across the state. Most raids occurred in the Khana Local Government Area, where at least 20 illegal oil refinery sites were destroyed.
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