By Chuks Oyema-Aziken
Dr. Innocent Barikor, the newly appointed Director-General, the National Environmental Standards and Regulation Enforcement Agency, was a popular Senior lecturer in Political Science at the University of Port Harcourt.
Before coming to UNIPORT, he lectured at the Rivers State College of Education.
He began his political journey as a supervisor at the Gokana local government council from 1992 to 1995. He was a member of the Rivers house of assembly from 2011 to 2015.
He has researched and published extensively on the Nigerian State and Minority Agitations, Poverty and Democratization, Debt and Debt Management, Human Rights, and Sustainable Development.
He was chairman of the Ogoni academics. In 2004, he was appointed Rivers State Coordinator of the National Poverty Eradication Programme (NAPEP) by the President of Nigeria. During his tenure, he developed and supervised innovative poverty reduction programmes such as COPE, Village Economic Development Solutions, Promise Keeper programme and others which have impacted on the Nigeria’s rural poor. In 2007, Barikor led the Grassroots Empowerment Network (GEN) delegation to the South Africa Investment Summit held in Durban.
As a development consultant, he has worked for numerous organizations including the Rivers State Sustainable Development Agency (RSSDA), where he consulted on the Agency’s Cassava Project between 2007 and 2008. He also has served as Chairman of the Board of the Grassroots Empowerment Network.
