Author: Constance Meju

The campaign for gender representation in decision making took a refreshing turn December 14 when secondary school students from three schools in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, locked horns at Visa Karena to argue for or against having women on decision-making platforms. The executive director of Kebetkache Women Development and Resource Center, Dr Emem Okon said the shift to school debate was to create awareness among the young on the need to understand and support gender equality ensuring mutual respect among both genders. Debate is a sensitization programme aimed at getting participants to spread learning from the opinions expressed to others…

The coordinator of the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project, HYPREP, Prof. Nenibarini Zabbey has intimated Ogoni communities of the projects policy of integrating affected communities in the clean-up process, to engender ownership of projects in their domain. To this effect, Prof. Zabbey led a team of HYPREP scientists and community fisher folks on a ground breaking investigative study on the correlation between mangrove and fish attraction along Ogoni shoreline on Saturday, November 18, 2023. According to him, the primary objective of the study is to, “create empirical tree restoration baseline data with which the post-mangrove baseline data with which the planting,…

The Petroleum Industry Act, PIA signed into law 2021 to guide oil and gas activities in Nigeria continues to receive bashing. This time, Ogonis have described it as anti-people designed to emasculate oil and gas communities while giving ownership to the lessors-oil operators. At an event recently organized to commemorate the 2023 Ogoni day in honour of the Ogoni 13 murdered by the Nigerian state for demanding a better deal for the Ogonis from oil activities in their land, said the people said there is a danger of role confusion among the agencies set up to manage the industry in…

The Ogoni struggle has veered off course moving from a noble agitation for self-determination by an ethnic nationality to one being derailed by personal interests. That was the highlight of one of the side events organized to commemorate the ninth Ogoni Day. Ogoni personalities, youth and women gathered at the instance of Prof. Olu Andah Wai-Ogosu, an Ogoni leader and key environmentalist at the Swiss Spirit Hotel, Port Harcourt on Friday, November 10, 2023 to mark the day in commemoration of 28 years of the killing of Ken Saro-wiwa and 12 other Ogoni martyrs sparking serious reflections on the state…

As the world battles to combat climate change to save the earth from destruction, African women have raised their voices against contradictory policies from their governments over land use and resource extraction. They expressed dismay over governments, who while legislating to deprive communities of their indigenous land with environmental preservation as excuse, turnaround to handover thousands of acres of land to operators in extractives and agro-business, living the people holed-in and incapacitated. The women who raised their voices at the just ended one-week African Women Climate Assembly held at the Digital Bridge Institute, Lagos, lamented that the contradictory posture of…

Civil Society Stakeholders in Rivers State have rejected the Tinubu administration Students Loan Scheme as announced, saying it offers no real solution to the current crisis in the country’s education system. The stakeholders drawn from executives of non-governmental organisations in the state, lawyers, academia, media and students of tertiary institutions in honour of the third anniversary of a former frontline human rights activist in the Niger Delta, late Comrade Anyakwee Nsirim Ovu at his Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law Complex, Rukpokwu Port Harcourt, pointed out flaws in the loan policy. They described the eligibility criteria as restrictive and…