ENVIRONMENT-NIGERIA: Renewed War on Garbage

By Toye Olori Reprint | | Print |

Toye Olori

LAGOS, Jul 24 2003 (IPS) - Henry Dike, a Nigerian footballer who plies his trade in Germany, ruined his holiday after disposing refuse at a wrong spot in Lagos.

Noticing heaps of garbage in almost every corner of the city, Dike thought it did not matter to dispose refuse in any of the heaps by the roadside. But he made a mistake that he will live to regret. Instead of a restful holiday, he had to do community work for two weeks.

On that fateful day in June, Dike carried a garbage bin from his brother’s apartment in his Mercedes Benz car, emptied the contents on his way to the city. He was promptly arrested by members of the council’s special anti-refuse task force, dubbed ”Operation Red Handed”.

Dike was tried in a local court. His defence: ”I saw refuse on the streets and I thought it was not illegal here to drop the refuse.”

He was sentenced to do community work using his Mercedes Benz to carry garbage to a dump site on a daily basis for two weeks. The judge told him: ”Since you love carrying and dropping refuse, it will be good for you to clear heaps of refuse on the roadside to the dump site.”

The other 15 persons arrested for dumping refuse indiscriminately, were not as lucky as Dike. They were each sentenced to three months imprisonment or to a fine of 10,000 naira (about 100 U.S. dollars).

Highways, sidewalks and every available open space and drainages in this commercial capital of Nigeria, are filled with garbage. And the streets are littered with disposable nylon sachets for packaged water, known locally as ”pure water”, which block free-flow of rain water, thereby constituting serious flooding.

”Pure water” became popular in Nigeria in the last ten years, as a means to quench thirst especially in heavy traffic jams, where young boys and girls make a living selling the iced packages of water to sweaty motorists.

Alimosho local government, where Dike spent his holiday, seems to be the only council in Lagos state, which still enforces the law on environment. Environmental activities and enforcement in the remaining 19 local governments have waned, prompting an indiscriminate dumping of refuse in the last four years.

The re-election of Governor Bola Tinubu and the appointment of Tunji Bello, an environmental journalist as the State Commissioner for Environment in June, have brought a new lease of life into the fight against filth in the state.

Slowly, some local councils are following the examples of Alimosho council.

Bello disclosed this week that Lagos state had spent over one billion naira (about 10 million U.S. dollars) to clear garbage in parts of the state. But he said the state still remained one of the dirtiest in the country.

Before the federal government introduced the National Monthly Environmental Sanitation Programme in the late 1980s, which lasted till the early 1990s, Lagos was described as the dirtiest capital of the world. With the compulsory monthly environmental sanitation exercise, the city attained an enviable position of one of the cleanest cities.

The exercise was cancelled in 1999 by President Olusegun Obasanjo, prompting Lagos, with a population of more than six million, to revert to its old appellation of the dirtiest city.

Bello has said that the state government is determined to clean up the city and ensure that it regains its past glory of being a beautiful place to live and work in.

The government has embarked on an enlightenment campaign, known as ”Kick Against Indiscipline”, to educate the public on the need to maintain a clean environment.

The state government is also planning to re-introduce the monthly environmental sanitation exercise beginning on the last Saturday of August.

Like before, between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. of every last Saturday of the month, residents would be restricted from moving about in order to clean their environment.

Top government officials have been meeting and consulting with the public at the grassroots to enlighten them on the new campaign to clean the state.

Babajide Alo, president of Nigeria Environmental Society, notes: ”There is no reason why we can not constitute environmental committees which will be like police to the environment, which should make sure that people who litter the environment are punished appropriately using the laws that are in our books.”

”People can make money from waste. People should think of setting up recycling plants for wastes and packaged water nylon sachets. The wrappers are recyclable and they can be used again after being cleaned and recycled to make another set of wrappers,” he says.

Alo suggests that incentives be given to users of packaged water who return the wrappers to the producers. ”For example, a 100 pieces of used wrappers could fetch 20 naira (two U.S. cents) and if you return 1,000 you get 100 naira (one U.S. dollar). If we do this, our cities will be rid of pure water wrappers”.

”Recycling will ensure that the gutters and drainages are not blocked and our homes are not flooded when it rains,” he says.

”The environment is a sustainer of life and if we do not manage it well we are reducing our lifespan, we are damaging our health and these are factors that are unseen. We want to say take care of your environment so that we can have something to live behind for the coming generation,” Alo says.

Titi Anibaba, of Lagos State Ministry of Environment, says: ”We are going to re-introduce the sanitary inspectors who will go from house to house to ensure that residents clean their environment and there will be mobile courts, at least two in each local government area, to try offenders. The existing laws would be invoked to punish people who are in the habit of throwing dirt out of moving vehicles or dumping refuse indiscriminately.”

”In three months there will not be filth on Lagos roads,” she assures.