The women chanted songs "climate justice now” and “we are one" and carried placards with different slogans. They marched through of streets of Port-Harcourt to the Government House gate to register their complaints with the Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike.
Women drawn from all walks of life around Africa and United States on Tuesday staged a peace protest in Port Harcourt, the capital of Rivers State, to call upon the international community to take urgent action on climate change and develop environmentally sustainable solutions.
The women chanted songs "climate justice now” and “we are one" and carried placards with different slogans. They marched through of streets of Port-Harcourt to the Government House gate to register their complaints with the Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike.
They stated that rural women in Africa have been impoverished by the incessant oil spills, air pollution, and environmental degradation by the multinational oil companies operating in the Niger Delta region, which they blame for climate change.
The demonstration was attended by a local non-governmental organization, Kebetkache Women Development and Resource Centre, whose spokesperson Emem Okon told a SaharaReporters correspondent that “humanity is in a crisis of dangerous carbon fuel, pollution fossil fuel, and the time to act is now and usher in a sustainable future.”
She added that the world must cancel plans for future carbon developments and deforestation to bring the atmospheric CO2 concentrations back to adequate levels.
Mrs. Okon also called for urgent action prior to 2020, in order to eliminate greenhouse pollution and for a comprehensive response from grassroots organizations to the United Nations.