PREMIUM TIMES

The Aba River, popularly known as ‘Waterside’, is located in the valley between Eziama community and Ogbor Ancient Kingdom – now called Ogbor-Hill, along Ikot Ekpene Road in Aba North Local Government Area of Abia State.

It flows from a place called Ohuru Isimiri in Obingwa Local Government Area of the state across many communities and continues to the famous Azumini Blue River in Ndoki, Ukwa East LGA of Abia State and terminates at the Opobo River, in Rivers State.

Residents, many who used the river’s resources in the past, said it flourished with aquatic lives and was the source of drinking water and other domestic uses for the people of the communities on its banks in the 1970s until the emergence of different companies that no channel their wastes into the water body.

Worse, the presence of a cattle market nicknamed ‘Ahiaudele’ (market of vultures) which has an abattoir on the banks of the river became another source of pollution to the river. Now, the river’s resources have declined.

“The people used to drink from this river around the 1970s but since they began to slaughter cows, defecate and urinate in the river with butchers emptying cow dungs and blood into the river, the people stopped drinking from it. Again, The Nigerian Breweries Plc, 7up Bottling Company Plc, and the International Glass Industry – all channel their chemical wastes into the river,” Amanze Evuka, a 60-year-old commercial tricyclist said.

Forty-nine-year-old Chima Fijo and fifty-one-year-old Ogbo Okoro-Agwu do their carwash businesses on the Enyimba Hotels part of the river bank. They corroborated Mr Evuka’s claim.

“I used to know waterside as a clean place, but these cow people have already destroyed the waterside,” says said Mr Fijo. “It’s those people killing cows here that are responsible for the bad state of this river,” added Mr Okoro-Agwu.

Companies channel waste into the river

Pepple Nnanna, a businessman who spent his childhood in Aba, described what it used to be like.

“When I was younger, we used to go to the waterside, we made use of the water, we used to cook and drink from the water. But presently, we no longer do that because of the environmental wastes from the Nigerian Breweries and other small-scale industries around, most of who directed their wastes to the waterside.”

Mr Nnanna mentioned 7UP Bottling Company Plc as one of the companies that push their industrial wastes to the waterside: “If you go along that road (pointing towards Umuoba Road) you’d see their drainage that runs 24hrs waste to the water, even with the residents around, you’d see them channelling their domestic waste to the waterside too – some don’t even have soakaways (septic tanks)”, he said.

Along Umuoba Road is the waste pipe belonging to the 7UP Bottling Company. It runs straight into the river through a compound opposite St. Ambrose Catholic Church – where a 46-year-old Oswald Cookie-Arm lives.

Mr Cookie-Arm is originally from Rivers State but was born in Aba and has lived in that compound since his childhood.

“We used to drink water from the river when we’re still little,” he said. “That’s where we fetched our water for drinking, bathing, washing of cloths and other things; but that’s when it was not polluted by this gutter here (pointing at a flowing drainage) from 7UP Bottling Company,” he said.

Asked where they now source their water, he pointed at a borehole whose taps were projected near the gutter. “That’s our source of water now,” he said.

In the company of Mr Oswald, I journeyed on a canoe to the point where the company channeled its waste to the river. The terminal point of the gutter built by the 7UP Bottling Company turned out to be an eyesore of assorted kinds of dirt.

We continued our trekking along a winding pathway into compounds and continued on a bush path till we got to the river bank where we saw some women washing clothes on the bank of the river.1`

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.

Nigerian Breweries, Unilever also culpable

Soon, I, with my entourage, went in search of other waste channels from the other companies mentioned.

Behind and inside the cattle market, just after the bridge, are discharge channels belonging to both Unilever Plc and Nigerian Breweries Plc.

But accessing the area nearly got me into trouble except for the quick intervention of my new-found friends, Yusuf Mohammed and Abdullaziz Adamu. I had to ‘settle’ some hemp-smoking young men to be allowed entry into the area already demarcated with a wooden fence. I was told that not even security operatives were allowed to access that place which I was later told is a den of hoodlums and kidnappers.

One after another, they came and inquired from my friends in hush tones, why I was there; and on seeing my camera, one of them made attempts to grab it but was resisted by Messrs Yusuf and Abdullaziz.

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.

This was according to Uche Akpan, one of the young men that we met in that secluded area.

“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. I feel that the chemicals are responsible for that; and even we that bathe in the river, after bathing, we do experience itches on our body,” said Mr Akpan.

Mr Yusuf who spoke in Hausa added, “Honestly, this river causes us to sick because when we bathe in it we always have rashes all over our body because of the chemicals being flushed into the river. There used to be fishes in the river and we used to catch them but the chemicals have killed them all. Before now, it was Lever Brothers that made use of these pipes but they have stopped. At present, it’s the Nigerian Breweries that flushes theirs into the river; let’s go there and I will show you the pipe.”

Searching further, we found the waste channel point belonging to the Nigerian Breweries Plc; it passes into the river with a local eatery by the side.

Speaking also in Hausa, Mr Abdullaziz, pointing to the gutter, described what the wastes look like whenever they are flushed into the river. “I’ve known this place for the past four years now, as it is now, they’ve not released the water, when they do, it usually goes higher than this, and some of the substances that appear on the surface of the water are usually oily and boiling, and those are the chemicals. Even at that, the environment is dirty and here’s a local eatery – they should be careful because germs could fly from this gutter into the food and it becomes a problem.”

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.

The authorities of the two communities declined comments when approached on this matter. They said the matter was already in court, hence they would not comment.

I made efforts to have an audience with the management of the Nigerian Breweries in Aba. On the first day of my visit, I was asked to return the following day.

After some days’ efforts, I met with Chukwuemeka Aniukwu, Nigerian Breweries Corporate Affairs Manager-South but he won’t speak until he gets a ‘clearance from Lagos.’ An appointment was fixed for another day.

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.

I paid a visit to 7UP Bottling Company, and the story was the same, I was asked to write to Lagos for clearance before I could have anyone speak to me.