Residents Clean Up Calabar, Want Youths Engaged Meaningfully in City Famed for Tourism

Residents of Calabar, the Cross River state capital have called on the state government to engage youths in meaningful vocations following the looting and vandalisation of public and private properties in the aftermath of the #EndSARS protest.

Residents im the most famous tourism destination famed for the Carnival Calabar, Africa largest street party, tagged the cleanup Project Rebuild Calabar.

Volunteers engaged in cleaning the city, and called on youths to desist from further destruction and channel their grievances to the right quarters.

“The message to the government right now is that they have to engage the youths in meaningful vocation as energy not used will be expended on negative activities,” said Timothy Archibong of the Efik Leadership Forum during the cleanup exercise in Calabar.

[bc_video video_id=”6206228785001″ account_id=”6116119081001″ player_id=”CJdhmO46zo” embed=”in-page” padding_top=”56%” autoplay=”autoplay” min_width=”0px” playsinline=”” picture_in_picture=”” max_width=”640px” mute=”” width=”100%” height=”100%” ]

Another volunteer Bassey Okon who is also the Coordinator Education, Rebuild Calabar, denounced the actions of the youths involved in the massive destruction of public and private properties.

“I want to tell the youths that were involved in this destruction, in this carnage, in this looting, that that wasn’t the way to go. There’s no sane society where people destroy the very thing that was meant to serve them, everybody, they didn’t think well,” said Okon.

The Cross River State Police Command had last week announced the arrest of Johnson Richard-Inem, the alleged mastermind of the wanton looting and vandalism at the Calabar International Conference Centre.

The command also disclosed that items including chillers, over 1000 pieces of customised chairs and customised designer carpets, among other items, were recovered from the suspect.

By Abel Ejikeme

Follow us on: