By Odudu Okpongete
Snr Correspondent, Port Harcourt

More than 200 anti-riot policemen have been deployed there to calm frayed nerves.

Eleme has two major sea ports and harbours some 100 oil and gas companies, including the Port Harcourt refinery and Eleme Petrochemicals Company.

Eyewitnesses said the youths had converged at the Refinery Junction to kick-start a protest against the NNPC. Policemen threw tear gas canisters and fired shots in the air to disperse them.

Amid the confusion, a trigger-happy policemen reportedly shot at the protesters and the bullets hit the jaws of Friday Ajunwa Mba, a graduate of Rivers State University of Science and Technology, Port Harcourt.

He was rushed to the hospital for treatment but was pronounced dead an hour later.

The news further infuriated the marchers. They moved to the divisional police station in Ogale, Eleme and burnt it down together with a white Mercedes Benz car belonging to a police officer.

They also torched a section of the police quarters as well as several vehicles belonging to the police and the NNPC.

For the most part of Tuesday, vehicular traffic was halted on the busy Eleme Road that leads to the neighbouring states of Akwa Ibom and Cross River; forcing travellers to divert to Aba, in Abia State.

Eleme Council Chairman, Ejoor Ejoor, told journalists that the protest was not stage by “organised youths groups” but by “miscreants”. He explained that the police are on the trail of the perpetrators to bring them to book.

But reliable sources in the area blamed the trouble on the NNPC for “refusing to employ qualified Eleme indigenes” into its subsidiaries operating in the area. According to them, about 100 youths working in the subsidiaries as contractors were taken to Abuja recently for interview as prelude to their confirmation as permanent staff.

However, “only two persons out of the lot were given such employment after serving the companies for five years – whereas findings revealed that the NNPC employed 500 persons to fill vacant positions during the exercise”. That led to the protest.