A motor park inside the National Inland Waterways Authority, River Niger Bridgehead, Onitsha was closed off by the officials of the Onitsha South Local Government Area, Anambra State, on Thursday due to piles of trash being dumped there.
As the council officials dragged out all the passengers and their luggage from commercial cars loading within the park, along with the operators and personnel at the park, the sealing caused some friction in the neighbourhood.
As soon as they entered the park, they began pasting legal documents, including a sealing order from the state environmental department and court orders they said were received from the Onitsha Magistrate Court.
The exercise, which got underway at 3 p.m., was personally overseen by Mr. Emeka Orji, chairman of the Onitsha South Local Government Transition Committee.
Orji told journalists at the scene that he personally came to the park about six weeks ago to advice the park operators to evacuate the refuse heaps, but they did not heed the advice.
He said each time the state governor, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo passed through the area, he would call him to ask why he allowed such huge dumps of refuse to be cited within the environment.
Orji said, “The letters we sent to the park owners about two weeks ago and a reminder were rebuffed, leaving us with no other option than to go to the court of competent jurisdiction to obtain an order to seal the park for causing environmental hazards to the general public.”
Ngozi Okpagu, the park’s operator, hurried to the site as the sealing was being done but was unable to enter the park since the gate had been closed off by the officials.
Okpagu stated that he ignored earlier warnings from authorities to leave the trash dumps because he had recently undergone surgery for a broken leg sustained in a car accident.
He pleaded with the council as a result, but the boss of the council informed him that it was too late to overturn the court’s decision because he was unable to urge his manager to remove the garbage dump or make a direct phone contact to the local council authorities while he was hospitalised.
“We offered to assist the park operators with two trucks to help them in evacuating the refuse dump but they could not utilise such an opportunity to avert this type of situation till this moment. Now, it is too late to cry when the horse has bolted out,” Orji added.
