Soot: Lawyer Drags FG to court, Demands N500m
compensation
From Ugochukwu Desmond
A legal practitioner in Port Harcourt Chris Okparaolu has dragged the Federal government to court over its failure to act on the menacing soot in Rivers State.
Okparaolu in a suit filed at the Federal High Court in Port Harcourt said he sought a judicial redress to enforce his fundamental rights to physical and mental health as guaranteed under Article 16 and 24 of the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights Act Laws of Nigeria.
In the supporting affidavit, the lawyer said that the 1st Respondent which is the Federal Government of Nigeria saddled with the responsibility of implementing the human rights provisions captured in the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Right (Ratification and Enforcement) Act, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004 failed in its responsibilities to enforce his physical and mental health rights.
He added that the 2nd Respondent is the chief law officer of the Respondent; responsible for, amongst other functions, advising the Respondent on the implementation and enforcement of treaties and other laws of the land also failed in its responsibilities.
“Sometime in the month of April 2016, many Nigerians including myself, living in Port Harcourt, began noticing the presence of an airborne particulate now commonly called “black soot” within the city of Port Harcourt and its environs. Black soot then was visible on white clothes spread outside and on the body of cars parked outside and it even increasingly began to affect the paint especially the white color used in the painting of the houses in Port Harcourt.
“When the emission of the black soot continued unabated and began to be seen in peoples’ living homes and that of myself, I and other residents of Port Harcourt began raising alarm to both the government of Rivers State and the Respondents on the dangerous effects of the black soot. On the heels of the public outcry against the deleterious impact of the black soot, the government of Rivers State, sometime in the month of May 2019, set up a technical committee made up of 20 experts from various inter-disciplinary and relevant fields led by the former honorable Commissioner for Environment, Prof. Roseline Konya to review and implement the recommendations of a scientific workgroup earlier established to investigate the prevalence of black soot in Rivers State.
“The technical committee which had in its team, a consultant physician and dermatologist at the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital, Dr. Dasetima AItraide, had conducted investigative studies into the airborne particulate (soot) and the report stated that illegal bunkering and gas flaring are two major sources of soot in the state. The technical committee reviewed and accepted the report of the scientific report by the technical study team set up by the government of Rivers State earlier on, which had it that following a hospital-based review of records of 22,077 persons, who received medical care for soot related conditions related to black soot. The report noted that the 12 persons who received the health care included women, men and children. The report found based on the risk of analysed pollutant samples of the black soot, heavy metals concentrate found in the soot and measured in the study showed that thousands of people in Rivers State are expected to suffer cancerous and non-cancerous diseases from the soot in the atmosphere”
Okparaolu, however, asked the court to declare that the inability of the federal government to act on different pleas to act on the soot amounts to a gross violation of his rights and rights of Rivers people.
The legal practitioner also asked the court to mandate the federal government to pay him the sum of 500 million for violating his fundamental rights as guaranteed under Article 16 of the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights and Section 33(subsection one) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 as amended.
