perspective/ Feature
By Femi Ogbonnikan
Flood displaces millions every year all over the globe and claims lives and property. Flood can arise from abnormally high precipitation, storm surges from tropical storms, dam burst or dam water release, and rapid snow belts or burst water mains. Nigeria experiences floods every year, especially flash floods and dam-related floods during the raining season.
In Ogun state, the attitude of the citizens, in no small measure, has contributed to the devastating effects of the flood. Dumping of refuse in gutters, erecting illegal structures along the right of ways of water, among others, have contributed to the devastating effects.
Residents of flood-prone and wetland areas, such as Isheri, Wawa, Arepo, Akute, Alagbole, etc (Ifo Local Government Area), Adigbe, Ofada, ibafo, Mowe, Magboro, etc (Obafemi-Owode Local Government Area), Gbangba, Ijaiye, Ijeun-Tuntun, Isale-Oja, Kuto, Amolaso, Ijeja, etc (Abeokuta South Local Government), Adedotun, Ago-Ika, Enugada, Totoro, Onikoko, etc (Abeokuta NorthLocalGovernment), Owa and Yemule River Courses (Ijebu-Ode Local Government Area), Obantoko, Arakanga (Odeda LocalGovernmentArea), Ado-Odo/Ota, Sagamu, Ijebu-East and Ogun Waterside who usually bear the brunts, on a yearly basis, have had bitter tastes of the flash flooding.
To stem the tides, as a responsive and responsible Government that is statutorily saddled with the protection of lives and property of its citizens, Ogun State government, on June 18, 2021, a press conference held and alerted the residents of the imminent flash flood that would come in July, spoke volume of the government’s intervention.
Special Adviser (SA) to the Governor on Environment, Oladimeji Oresanya, warned the residents to avoid going out on five particular dates, the days which they knew quite well that the rainfall would be torrential.
This was a warning to the people, especially those who are doing fishing and other agricultural activities around the river banks to finish their harvesting in the last month of August, so that they could excuse the river banks during this period, which was for a short duration. Those who live by the river banks, except those who know how to swim, they have been advised that, children, elderly ones and physically challenged people, should move out of the areas for now. But the anti-progenic ones, the government has waded in to address that. The anti-progenic ones are the buildings that are obstructing along the right of ways of the water flow. Talking about the buildings that have been erected along that area, people are encroaching around the flood plain. The Ministry of Physical Planning and Urban Development is already marking those houses and they may have to pull down those structures to allow the capacity of our rivers to be able to carry the water.
Meanwhile, at the inception of the current dispensation in the state on May 29, 2021, premium has been placed on a clean environment, just to lend credence to a popular maxim, “cleanliness is next to Godliness. Towards achieving the set goals, the Prince Dapo Abiodun-led administration made no mistake, by bringing onboard a recognised authority in waste management and environmental development, in the person of Oresanya, who was at a time Managing Director/CEO of Lagos Waste Management Authority (LAWMA) from May 2005 to August 2015, and also a Lead Consultant for UN-Habitat/UNEP Waste Management Data Collection Project in Nigeria, to man the Ogun Waste Management Authority.
Success of any thriving economy is dependent on private sector participation (PSP) to drive the chain of growth and development. In this wise, the deft innovation that was brought to bear, with the use of registered private waste collectors, to carry out the assigned tasks, can’t be over-emphasized.
With just two compactors and a few tippers that were available to cater for the entire state, before the inception of the current administration, the journey to a reinvigorated OGWAMA began in January 2020. But till date, 138 compactors and a good number of tippers wholly owned by private investors, are doing their jobs, without let or hindrances, and they are also providing services across board, due largely to the creation of a healthy and an enabling environment for businesses to thrive
But for other services, like medical waste and hazardous special waste collections require no compactors, but other special service vans, like refrigerated vans, are used to carry out the task of those who are into hazardous waste collection. And they are doing silt and vegetal wastes on the roads and they also use tippers to do them on the streets.
At presently, there are ten dump sites (Saje (Abeokuta), Oke-Diya (Sagamu), Old tollgate (Ijebu-Ode), Kurata (Ota), Ifo, Iju, Ogere, Owode-Egba, Ilaro and Ewekoro) that are spread across the state. These sites were created for the people to dump their waste, legally in the state. Because Ogun state is wide, it was decided that dump sites shouldn’t be too far away from the collection points in order to make it more efficient for vehicles to collect waste and dump easily.
But these collection and dumping sites have been delineated into eight operating zones whereby officers of the Agency supervise them. They supervise waste collections, be it residential or, commercial or, industrial or, medical or, special hazardous. Parts of the responsibilities of these supervisors also include the supervision of street sweeping and vegetal control.
An Enforcement and Advocacy team plays a critical role in compliance with the rules of the game. The use of sanitary inspectors in this team is significant in various zones they are assigned to operate independently of the operations officers. They monitor the environment and also carry out the enforcement and awareness campaign. Besides, they monitor and prosecute offenders.
There exists a group of a compliance department. And in that compliant what they entail is monitoring, creating awareness campaign and enforcement. A team of monitoring officers always go, check every nook and corner, send pictures, upload them into the Authority’s ‘apps’ and they are rewarded. Some of members of the team are retired civil servants, retired Permanent Secretaries (PS).
They are mainly pensioners in this group. What they do everyday is to monitor for the Authority and they are paid some stipends. They sell information and also send pictures of everything on a daily basis. Some of them are Community Development Associations (CDAs) members. Then, apart from that, under that compliance group, there is a compliance strategy and also an awareness campaign team that go out with public address systems to the streets, to the markets and they campaign to the public. They try to correct them, tell them what to do and the rest of it.
That is targeted campaign. Then, the last line is the enforcement. The officials look like KAI operatives in Lagos State. They are either sanitary inspectors or, volunteers or, NGOs and they are well kitted and remunerated. They go all over the state and carry out the assigned tasks in conjunction with the local government authorities. In essence, they collaborate in this joint enforcement. Those who are contravening the law are apprehended and subsequently prosecuted them. The team also reduces street trading, as much as possible, all over the state.
By and large, the recent shut down of Iberekodo market, Abeokuta, was used an indicator for other markets in the state. The shutdown of the market was aimed at two reasons. One, the market traders believe that they were so traditional and they were not complying with government’s regulations.
“May be, it was one of these proactive actions from the government agencies, like ours, that saved the situation. We had to shut down that market to enable us clean that market, clean it very well and to let the traders see the beauty of it. So, to clean that market, we had to shut it down to allow us access to clean the market. And that we did. We clean everywhere. If you go to that market now, it is now looking better and decent now.
“And we put storage bins there. We have used it as a form of yardstick to measure traditional market and a level of cleanliness that the government desires of them. So, the traders there are very grateful that we had to do that for them. But we warned them, not to go back to the old bad practice. So, it was a corrective measure”, said Oresanya.
Ogbonnikan wrote from Abeokuta, Ogun State capital .
