Facilitate clean-up of Niger Delta, don charges government

Facilitate the tidying up of Ogoniland and other devastated areas of the Niger Delta and stop looking for foreign help, Prof. Wole Soboyejo of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, African University of Science and Technology (AUST) yesterday challenged the Federal Government.

Speaking at a five-day Pan African Materials Institute in Abuja, he noted that it is high time Nigerians and the rest of the continent took responsibility for correcting environmental, health and infrastructure deficits.

While observing that the technology for effecting the clean up was costly, Soboyejo, however, added that AUST could offer some assistance if approached.
According to him, the institution had initiated a project to tackle oil spill and environmental hazards.

He said the clean-up could be achieved through deployment of certain bacteria that can be massed produced to cover wider area.

Soboyejo explained that what the institute can do to assist is to undertake mass production of that specific bacterial to speed up remediation of the affected areas in Ogoni and other communities, adding that this technology was what was used to tackle the oil spillage in Mexico.

“For us to solve our own problem, we must take a second look at our problems and see how we can handle them internally rather than looking to foreign countries to bring us help. Yes, I agree, we can be of assistance in the cleaning of the Niger Delta region affected by oil spillage. We can use bacterial remediation. We started that project here sometime earlier. We can develop it further to help in the clean- up of the Niger Delta area. This is why the AUST was set up by the World Bank to build support for local technology in the area of health, environment, manufacturing and other fields”, he said.