How youths turned East-West Road protest to carnival

Hundreds of youths from different communities in Rivers State who recently protested the poor state of the East-West Road converted the protest to a carnival of sort as the protesters mounted canopies in the centre of the road where they sang and danced. The protesters came along with cooking utensils and food items which they […]

Hundreds of youths from different communities in Rivers State who recently protested the poor state of the East-West Road converted the protest to a carnival of sort as the protesters mounted canopies in the centre of the road where they sang and danced.

The protesters came along with cooking utensils and food items which they cooked and shared among themselves.

The youths who were armed with placards were protesting the failure of the federal government to fix Eleme axis of the road.

They deflated tyres of articulated vehicles, and blocked the road with the trucks. Thousands of stranded commuters were forced to trek several kilometres to board vehicles at both ends of the holdup.

The protest which started on Monday continued on Thursday and the protesters vowed not to vacate the road until they got assurance from the federal government that the road would be fixed in a very short time.

One of the protesters and a member of the Board of Trustees of Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP, Celestine Akpobari, said the essence of the protest was to draw the attention of the federal government and all the companies operating along the stretch of East-West road to the plight of the people using the road.

Another protester, Johnmark Olaka, said the protesters would continue to occupy the road until there was an assurance that the road would be fixed.