Regulators should enforce the law
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has again shaken the table with grave statistics that children below five years old in Nigeria are dying, needlessly, of (outdoor) air pollution-related pneumonia and of household air pollution-related pneumonia. UNICEF’s staggering figures put Nigeria as having the highest number of air pollution-related child pneumonia deaths in the world. The signs and symptoms of pneumonia, according to scientists, may include cough, fever, shortness of breath, sharp or stabbing chest pain, loss of appetite, low energy, and fatigue.
The grim revelation by UNICEF, at this year’s World Pneumonia Day, is that almost 185 children under the age of five die every day from pneumonia due to air pollution in Nigeria – the majority of them from air pollution in the household, including that from cooking over open fires or cookstoves in the home. According to Peter Hawkins, UNICEF Representative in Nigeria, “this is a travesty – for their families and for Nigeria – especially because the vast majority of these deaths are preventable.”
The Global Burden of Disease said that 78 per cent of air pollution-related pneumonia deaths in Nigeria are among children under-five – the highest proportion across all countries. In 17 countries across Africa, air pollution contributes to more than 50 per cent of pneumonia deaths. Most of these deaths are among children and due to household air pollution – though deaths from outdoor air pollution are rising, according to the GBD. Deaths of Nigerian children under-five due to overall air pollution-related pneumonia were 67,416 in 2019, while deaths of Nigerian children under-five due to household-specific air pollution-related pneumonia were 49,591 during the same year.
Only recently, a report by Stakeholder Democracy Network (SDN), an international resource watchdog group, said Nigeria has some of the worst air pollution in the world, with dense clouds of choking soot hanging over gridlocked cities, leading to a rise in serious health conditions. Cities that the report listed as mostly affected are Port Harcourt, Aba, Onitsha, and Kaduna where poor air quality has reached crisis levels of pollution in recent years. There is irrefutable evidence of cause to effect, considering the rising cases of asthma, and respiratory diseases.
Researchers also focus on the bad quality of fuel imported and used in the country, as well as the equally bad quality fuel refined illegally in the creeks of Port Harcourt and Bayelsa, which, from investigation, is of higher quality than the imports. Regardless, the unsophisticated refining process adopted in the creeks sends up impurities into the atmosphere and this is driven by strong sea wind to where it can do damage to unsuspecting residents.
In most Nigerian cities, vehicles with unacceptable emission standards clog the streets, oozing impurities unchecked. Majority of these are used vehicles that are close to end-of-life, meaning they are forbidden in the streets of the European and American cities from where they were exported to Nigeria. More of these vehicles are expected on the shores of the nation in the years ahead, as the developed world increases its switch to electric vehicles that are more fitting for the global quest for a reduction of emissions of CO2 that is implicated in global warming.
Nigeria’s air quality is expected to be governed by the National Environmental (Air Quality Control) Regulations, 2014. The purpose of these regulations, according to the government is to provide for improved control of the nation’s air quality to such an extent that would enhance the protection of flora and fauna, human health and other resources affected by air quality deteriorations. The regulation is expected to guarantee everyone’s right to clean air. But the government seems hesitant to enforce the regulations or lacks the political will to do so.
