How flooding problem reveals Nigeria's poor environmental protection KAYODE KETEFE While the fact that our environment is poorly protected may be known to most educated Nigerians, not many know the actual scope and the ramifications of this problem. Our society is under numerous assaults via practices that endanger the environment; these include bad physical planning, indiscriminate erection of structures, unchecked disposal of waste into the river and drains, uncontrolled use of public address systems for both religious and commercial purposes leading to noise pollution, haphazard or unauthorised felling of trees constituting ecological problems, building of houses on water ways and thereby obstructing the pathway that the river should follow, pouring of dangerous chemical into rivers for fishing purposes, gas flaring by oil companies and so on. All these reckless onslaughts on the environment are taking place against the background of the legions of legislations Nigeria has on the protection of the environment. As a matter of fact, Nigeria is among the nations with comprehensive laws on the environmental issues. However, lack of monitoring and effective enforcement has undermined the protection efforts. The imperative for environmental protection policy in Nigeria is enshrined in the 1999 Constitution, Section 20 of which empowers the Federal Government (FG) to protect and improve the environment and safeguards the water, air and land, forest and wildlife of the country. Drawing from this general constitutional empowerment, the FG has promulgated various laws and Regulations to safeguard the environment. These diverse laws, which are not less than 21, essentially include Harmful Waste (Special Criminal Provisions) Decree, Energy Commission of Nigeria Act, and Federal Environmental Protection Agency Act. Others are the National Parks Act, Federal Environmental Protection Agency Act, Federal Environmental Protection (Amendment) Decree, Land Use Act, Endangered Species (Control of International Trade & Traffic) Act, Environmental Impact Assessment Act, Land Use (Validation of Certain Laws) Act, River Basins Development Authorities Act, Oil in Navigable Waters Act, Subsidiary Legislation. The remaining are Oil in Navigable Waters Regulations, Gold Trading Act, National Agricultural Land Development Auth. Decree, Oil Mineral Producing Areas Dev. Comm. Decree, Oil Pipelines Act, Sea Fisheries Decree, National Commission for Museums and Monuments Act, National Council for Arts and Culture Act, and the National Endowment for the Arts Decree. Section 2 of the Environmental Impact Assessment Act of 1992 for instance, provides that the public or private sector of the economy shall not undertake or embark on or authorise projects or activities without prior consideration of the effect on the environment. Since 1999, the tasks of administering and enforcing environmental laws in Nigeria has become the responsibility of the Federal Ministry of Environment (FME) which took over the functions from its predecessors called Federal Environmental Protection Agency (FEPA), which was created under the FEPA Act. In addition to the Federal laws, each state of the federation has also made laws to protect the environment within its jurisdiction. For instance, Lagos State enacted Environmental Protection Agency Law, which established the Lagos State Environmental Protection Agency (LASEPA). The state made Environmental Pollution Control Law, to provide for the control of pollution and protection of the environment from abuse. LASEPA's main functions are monitoring and controlling the disposal of waste in Lagos State and advising the State Government on all environmental management policies. Many places in Nigeria are prone to various types of erosions. The common ones are coastal flooding, rain flooding and urban flooding. The type called gully erosion, for example constantly ravages states like Enugu Abia, Imo, Gombe States Enugu, Edo, Ebony, Kogi, Adamawa, Ondo, Delta, Jigawa and Anambra. Other type called coastal erosion is prevalent in, Akwa Ibom, , Rivers, Cross Rivers, Ogun, Cross Rivers, Ondo, Delta, and Bayelsa. The effects of neglect and abuses of all these laws can be so dire on the society, but unfortunately people tend to realise the folly of the abuses only in the aftermath of its tragic consequences. One of the noticeable effects of the said abuses in Nigeria today is the incidence of flooding which usually leads to massive loss of lives and property whenever it happens. Within the space of six weeks, severe flood ravaged Lagos State and Oyo State, claiming hundreds of lives and destroying properties that worth billions of naira. The flood tragedy in Lagos happened on July 10 after several hours of unabated rain, most of the roads in the city were rendered impassable; vehicular and human movements were hampered, leading to paralysis of commercial activities; many commuters were stranded and could not get into their houses till late in the night while others sought for alternatives abodes. The news of the casualties came in trickles days upon days after the incident as we lacked reliable adequate data collection mechanism in such emergencies. The areas worst hit by the sadistic deluge included ObafemiAwolowo Way, Ikeja, the round-about linking Oba Akran Way , Apapa-Oshodi Expressway, Agege, Abule-Ado Bus Stop, especially the road leading to Lagos-Badagry Expressway, Egbeda and environs, , Ojo, Ipaja-Ayobo, Igando, Orile and Ahmadu Bello Way, AdeolaOdeku Street on Victoria Island. Not less than 100 people, including children and a couple lost their lives. Nothing attests to the severity of the tragedy than the fact that Governor BabatundeFashola SAN, had to declare a public holiday for all public and private schools in the state the following day. The Ibadan flood disaster, which happened on August 26, 2011, lasting for six hours, equally left tears and sorrow in its trail. Countless number of vehicles were submerged in the flood which caused unprecedented traffic jam and an internal displacement of thousands of residents. The worst hit places included Onipepeye areas, Iwo Road, Old Ife Road Oke Ayo, Yemetu, Agbadagbudu, Odo-Iye, Bodija Estate, Agbowo, Olomi, Eleyele, Apete and OdoOna-Elewe. An estimated 102 people, also including children and a number of entire families, were ruthlessly swept into untimely death. Ibadan is not new to the menace of disastrous deluge. It had happened in 1960, when more than 1,000 residents were rendered homeless as the Ogunpa River overflowed its banks. There was another deluge in 1963 when not less than 500 houses were destroyed and leaving hundreds people dead. In yet another disaster in 1978, city, official record put the number of the dead at 32 and houses damaged at 100. But the most devastating of all floods in Ibadan history occurred in August 1980 when about 10 hours of unstinted downpour submerged many places in the city with about 250 casualties and hundreds of houses damaged. The common denominators for all these tragedies were bad practices that endanger environmental health and poor enforcement of environmental laws by the government agencies. Bad practices of the people included clogging the rivers, streams, drainages with household wastes which blocked the routes of the rivers, causing it to overflow. As usual, after the recent Lagos and Ibadan flood, there were cacophonies of promises by the government on the issue of prevention of recurrence. Both Oyo and Lagos states, FG and a number of private organisations promised relief materials for the victims of the disasters. Lagos and Oyo States also went to the extent of issuing threats against the perpetrators of illicit practices which led to or which contributed to the flooding calamities. On the heels of the flooding, for instance, Governor Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State issued a seven-day ultimatum to owners of buildings built on waterways in Ibadan to vacate as demolition of all the illegal structures would start. Same threat was issued in Lagos. Meanwhile, President Goodluck Jonathan has also called for comprehensive review of the Erosion and Flood Control Policy in view of the increasing incidence of flood across the country especially in Lagos State and Oyo States. The disasters had also elicited a deluge, (no pun intended!) of responses from all the stakeholders in Nigeria. On his part, the President Goodluck Jonathan has promised a comprehensive review of the Erosion and Flood Control Policy with a view to curb recurrence the tragedies. The Oyo State Commissioner for Environment and Water Resources, Mr.MajekodunmiAborode, also announced that the state would take an unusual measure of posting security men from the ministry to monitor all areas around the stretches of the Ogunpa River in order to apprehend those offenders who dump refuses into the famous river.. "The indiscriminate dumping of refuse in the Ogunpa channels is done after 6.00pm when people are not supervising. We now need to operate 24 hours to stop this practice" Aborode said. In a recent speech on the need for Nigeria to imbibe good culture in environmental protection the Lagos State Commissioner for Environment, Mr.Tunji Bello, said Nigeria must wage a constant war against environmental challenges. Bello said "Nigeria has three of some of the major environmental l challenges in the world. We have the problems of desertification in the North, the soil erosion in the East and Flooding in the West. We are therefore under great obligations to strategise in order to contain all these challenges; we cannot afford to fold our hands" Also speaking in similar vein, Bello's counterpart from Anambra State, whose state is one of Nigeria's sore points of ecological challenges, Mr. Michael Egbedike, attributed most of the problems causing gully erosion in the state to human reckless practices. Egbedike said 'We may not be able to control some natural disasters, but we can at least control our personal habits that exacerbate the problem. "One of such is our developmental pattern, the way we develop our properties. Everybody finishes his compound with a concrete pavement, and pipes all his water onto the street. The drainages that are constructed are therefore overburdened every day. They converge on the streets, and destroy all that is in their path. When this huge water is coming down the streets, it terminates on the open sites, and it starts to dig, and the gullies start to form'. 'We need to change our thinking, and need to go through a process of reorientation.. We have no country to go to, so we must solve this problem." Also speaking to this writer on the issue of environmental protection, the Executive Director of a Lagos-based non-governmental organisation, Chief Sola Ojeriakhi, called for collaborative efforts to fight the menace of environmental pollution and damage and to overcome the man-induced ecological disaster like flood. He said "For the battle against the damage of the environment to succeed, there is need of or concerted efforts of all of us, both the government and the general populace should work together because we all stakeholders in the Nigerian nation and environment belong to all of us" In his own view, a Lagos-based lawyer, Mr.Oladeji Rasheed, urged the government to be more active in enforcing laws on the environmental matters, he posited that if Nigeria ensures adequate enforces legislation in the areas of environmental protection, there would be marked improvement in the environmental health and standards of living of the people. Rasheed said "The problem of environmental challenge we have in Nigeria has not much to do with absent of good legislations, but the attitude of the law enforcement agencies to enforce our myriads of laws. "Nigeria a plethora of law on the environmental protection alone but we are achieving very effect. Take for instance the case of those who clog our rivers and streams with refuses and all kinds of debris, there is a law against such practices, nevertheless we don't have supervisors in place to constantly monitor the all the areas prone to such environmental abuse and bring the offenders to book. I believe by imbibing positive attitude to enforcement of our law we should be able to improve the society for the better." |
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
No comments:
Post a Comment