Rowland Adewumi
CNN recently declared that Lagos was the worst place on earth to work following Business Week’s report; a recent research shows that Nigeria is the dirtiest place on earth; and past reports have showed that Nigeria is the most corrupt nation in the world. Poverty could have caused the corruption and insecurity, but does poverty makes one’s environment dirty? If Cleanliness is indeed next to Godliness , does this explains why Nigeria is not God’s plan? There are so many unanswered questions regarding the effect of dirtiness on Nigerians and tendency for evil, because the overall effects of environmental dirtiness have not been fully quantified. Dirtiness and disease are related and linked considerably to morbidity, mortality, and health care cost. The summary of this writing is that Nigeria (streets and most homes) is dirty! Take a minute off reading from your computer screen, and look around the room you are in, is it clean? Now, take a look outside through the windows…..clean? This is another area(apart from corruption and poverty) that we need one big cleanup job, if Cleanliness is indeed next to Godliness, once we solve this problen (heart and environment), solutions will begins to answer to our problems? Maybe? At times one might want to wonder that the cleanliness rate of our environment is directly proportional to the cleanliness of our heart? Is it true that, as a Nigerian’s heart thinks, so it reflects in her environment? In this age, Nigeria still practice open defecation and unscientific mode of disposal system, very dirty markets as you go through, man-made mountains of litters along the streets, beggars and police, and stinking public officers, over-flowing gutters, and many more eyesores that is uncommon decades ago. While most of these are government responsibility, I think we need an adequate community awareness campaign taken-up to ensure proper clean environment and maintain hygienic conditions in the locality that are not government’s responsibility. While the government might want to clean your street, they will not clean you toilet and bedroom? This will not only improve health conditions of the masses but will also ensure better living standards. It is a shame that no organized sanitation system exists within Nigeria except quarters built by Shell Petroleum Development Company, Julius bagger, Abuja’s Maitama and Asokoro! It is a shock that only about 10% of the households within all rural area in Nigeria have simple scientific disposal facility of sanitary wastes in the form of septic tanks. Majority of the sewage water in some cases sewage are disposed off directly to nearby low lying areas or to receiving water bodies. In the case of stagnant water bodies, diseases develop.  The masses have paid and children unborn will pay for consequences of these avoidable unhygienic practices forced on the masses. Such unhygienic practices of disposal of sanitary wastes result have caused growth of different disease carrying vectors, pollute different water bodies where water could be sourced; the use of water polluted by disposal of sanitary wastes often results in spread of water borne diseases. Nigeria will and have lost considerable working man-days due to spread of diseases; what else can one say about odour and mosquito nuisance. If dirty and being a Nigerian does no correlate, and then it is clear that actions should be undertaken to provide relief, at least for future generation and in the immediate future. Consequently, longer-term action should also be implemented to offer a viable and more permanent solution to sanitation in Nigeria. In view of the above and to meet the demand for having a good healthy Nigerians, principles and strategies need be in place today-for long term benefit. While an organized piped sewerage network system, with adequate treatment facility, is the best mode of handling sanitary wastewater. However, this is not possible in most Nigeria’s city, because settlements are located at a considerable distance apart, acute scarcity of water well below the standard per capita supply rate required to make a sewerage system operative. However, this does not stop us from leaving health by developing indigenous solution to meet our peculiar problem.
The simple solutions that is cost effective and which many of our decision makers have over looked is simply the engagement of both governmental and Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) for development of community awareness to educate the public on simple construction of on-site sanitation facilities. Let forget such facilities as Septic tank with soak pit and Single pit pour flush toilet. The way to go is Twin pit pour flush toilet. Twin pit pour flush toilet is economic, eco-friendly and can perform satisfactorily even in an area having a high water table. The major advantage of twin pit pour flush toilet is the very low requirement of water. In this system, two leach pits are considered – one will be kept under use at a time. When one pit gets filled up, excreta would be diverted to the second pit. The first pit will be covered with earth and allowed to digest for a period of about one year. By the time the second pit is full, almost all the pathogens in the first pit die and could be safely disposed of as manure. Thus, the two pits could be used alternatively and perpetually. Since Nigeria’s socio-economic condition is generally poor, and the awareness towards maintaining a proper sanitary system is lacking, this is the way to go, it better to provide community toilet facilities for the economically weaker section, which form the majority. All the idle, dead, and decoration existing scientific toilets should either be converted to twin pit pour flush type toilets or be eradicated. A modified system of this system has been implemented in other countries under similar conditions, and they are far cleaner than Nigeria. To make Nigeria clean, the works to be taken-up would include, in priority, that all NGOs having previous experience in this area be engaged for a wide spread campaigning for community awareness about dirtiness, efforts should be started to ensure proper better understanding of the needs for maintaining a good sanitation system, introduction of community toilets in cities, even some area of Lagos still needs one today; and lastly re-introduce Buhari-Idiagbon’s War Against Indiscipline (WAI). It worked then, hopefully it might work again-we don’t have to wait for Buhari in 2015 to reintroduce this?
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