Safeguarding the environment

IT is not clear how the Nigerian government will celebrate today’s World Environment Day, but one can be rest assured that there will be enough blasts and fumes from electricity generating sets and other sources of carbon monoxide to assure the rest of the world that the nation is far removed from the global activities to reduce greenhouse gas emission and control them. Though today’s global celebration of the environment is built around the theme or slogan: “Kick the Habit! Towards a Low Carbon Economy”, it is not certain Nigerians and their government are ready to join the rest of the world to kick out habits that constitute great harm to the environment and, invariably, the people themselves.

THE Nigerian alarming environmental situation is not unexpected. Almost all aspects of life are affected by the dangerous drift the nation is making in its social, political and economic quests. The long years of misgovernance have caused serious infrastructural decay. Almost all facilities that should be giving comfort to the people have collapsed, forcing Nigerians to resort to taking emergency but dangerous measures to sustain their social and economic existence.

THE near absence of electricity supply, for instance, has caused serious economic dislocation to the people and the nation. Currently, the amount of electricity generated and supplied in the country has dropped to a record low level, causing serious hardship to the citizenry. But because no meaningful industry and /or commercial engagement can be carried out without electricity, Nigerians have been forced to embrace a stop-gap initiative of using generating set to meet their daily electricity needs.

ALMOST every household in Nigeria has invested in the small electricity generating set. Even the few surviving industries are not powered by the electricity from the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN); they have devised their own survival strategies by conducting their operations through independently generated energy or environmental unfriendly process of using diesel engine to generate electricity.

LINKED to electricity generation is the problem of water supply. Lack of provision of potable water has caused many a Nigerian to turn to borehole for regular water supply. Many Nigerians who can afford it have sunk boreholes in their homes. The environmental implications of such actions are just as bad as gas emission. The protective layers of the earth are directly affected when holes are punctured in sensitive areas of the earth crust in the bid to get clean and clear water that is good enough for human consumption. The environment is imperiled further and it is no surprise, therefore, that the world has been hit by several nature-induced disasters in recent times.

ALL these stop-gap measures have created serious environmental problems for the country. Poisonous gasses and fumes are released regularly into the atmosphere without any form of control. The nation has recorded many deaths caused by the poisonous emissions from generating sets. But the recurrence of these carbon monoxide-inspired tragedies has not instructed the nation’s leadership about the urgency of solving the nation’s electricity crisis by fast-tracking efforts on the provision of facilities that would make the environment safer and more life-friendly.

WHILE it may not be wrong to conclude that Nigeria is, perhaps, the largest importer of electricity generating sets, as its citizens rely on such ad hoc electricity generating measures as solutions to their energy problems, concerted efforts need to be made to forestall the conscious rape of the environment that poisonous fumes from such appliances constitute. The government will have to blaze the trail in these efforts by ensuring that life-enhancing social amenities like electricity and water are provided. It is when there is a regular supply of electricity that environmentally damaging practice of emitting carbon into the atmosphere through generating sets will cease.

THERE is no doubt about the threat an unsafe environment or a carbon monoxide-filled atmosphere posed to humanity. Apart from the harmful effects such an environment will have on human, animal and flora, it may gradually lead to the extinction of humanity, as well as plants and animals. Already, the quality of human life has reduced drastically. In Nigeria, life expectancy is said to have fallen below 45 years. The degradation and wilful rape of the environment is one of the factors that caused life to depreciate drastically in the country. It is not unexpected that the high amount of poisonous and/or toxic air that is breathed in by Nigerians might be one of the major causes, if not the main cause, of sudden death among youths.

ENVIRONMENTAL laws need to be given more bites. While it will be wrong to ask government to come up with tough measures on the use of generating sets, when it has failed to provide the people with adequate electricity supply, it still needs to take drastic measures against indiscriminate emission of industrial waste and dumping of toxic materials in the environment by companies and even humans. In spite of the numerous entreaties by government to oil companies operating in the Niger Delta, gas is still being indiscriminately flared in the region, causing more environmental hazards to the people. What this suggests is either the absence of laws that guide such operations or failure of the government to execute such laws, even if they are available. But whatever may be the case, the Nigerian government needs to review its attitude to the environment and adjust appropriately to confront the enormous challenges a poisoned environment presents.

AS the world celebrates the environment today, Nigeria cannot afford to be left behind in the race to secure the human life-supporting enclave by kicking out habits that are detrimental to a good and healthy world. Though successive Nigerian governments have failed the people in their assigned tasks of providing them with the good life and good governance, the administration of President Umaru Yar’Adua should not compound their woes by the continued rape of the environment as a result of pollution. It must, as a matter of priority tackle the problem of electricity, as well as provide other social amenities that will make life worth living in the country. It is only this that will make the people to discontinue the harmful practice of being their own municipal government— by generating their own electricity and providing water and thus hemorrhaging nature’s fragile membrane.

bread, bullets and bullies

What is the connection between bread and bullets? The late Chief Hubert Ogunde in his early days as a travelling theatre exponent wrote and performed the play entitled “Bread and Bullets.” It was not known whether during the performance tour, bread was offered in exchange for bullets or whether some people felt bullets were preferable to bread. What was apparent was the irrepressible Ogunde’s intention to use the play to strike a social chord that would tune the senses of the authority to the inclement social conditions of people at that time.

SOME policemen in Delta State tried to strike a balance between bread and bullets. They wanted to find out if bread could stop the deadly flight of bullets. In the morning of May 28, according to a newspaper report, a four-man police team escorting a bullion van shot one Madam Elizabeth Krokele, a 50-year-old bread hawker and a mother of four, on Orhuwhorun Road. The policemen, it was reported, did not wait for the result of their experiment on bread and bullets. They sped off, leaving the woman to swim in the pool of her blood, until a good Samaritan came to her aid.

IT was not stated why the policemen shot the woman. Could she have wanted to rob the bullion van, said to be conveying N100 million, with her bread? Was Madam Krokele wielding her loaves like submachine guns to have merited her being sprayed with bullets? Loaves of bread could, sometimes, look like grenades or parcel bombs to a befuddled mind. And a bosomy woman with loaves of bread strapped to her body could have looked like a suicide bomber about to strike. How else would drug-condensed minds react to a potently dangerous foe like that, if not to gun her down?

POLICEMEN escorting bullion vans are bullies; they behave like raving maniacs. They bulldoze their way through traffic and endanger the lives of innocent people. They have caused the death of many people and nothing has happened to them. Madam Krokele is lucky to be still alive. Not many people can survive such an ordeal, not after being shot for carrying such deadly weapons as bread.