Rivers Evasive Environmental Sanitation System

Cleanliness is a culture in Africa. Newly married women in some towns and villages are being examined of how strong they are by the way they wake in the wee hours to sweep the entire compound of their matrimonial homes and how clean they are by the elderly women. Women make sure that grass does not grow in their various matrimonial homes or on its entrance, in a case it is not tarred, and they map out a certain market day to do general sanitation, using cycles and hoes to weed the premises. Everyone is cautious about dirt and that is why lavatories are built in the villages outside the main building. But today, this culture is losing its potency especially among the people living in the city.

I had the opportunity to visit a friend at the Rivers State Government House, otherwise called the Brick House, recently. The environment was scintillating, bequeathing to the mind only the fact that its luxury could be why every politician is doing-or-dying to seeing that he becomes the first occupant of such a magnificent earthly paradise.

But before I entered the Brick House premises, (when I was at the Old GRA axis) I found out that there are more baskets for litres virtually at every spot, more than the residents. Was this because the Old GRA axis encompassed to the Brick House? I was skeptical about this observation. The baskets and the iron built for bin units are as empty as a Sunday market. I wouldn't know if why there are numerous baskets around the Brick House is to entice the Governor, Rt Hon. Chibuike Amaechi. Is this to showcase that the agency responsible for the cleaning of the environment in Port Harcourt is working tirelessly? Sham!

Before I embarked on this journey, while at the popular Isaac Boro Park, Port Harcourt, being the Heartbeat of the State, was a sorry tale. Not only the noise buzzing from within like the buzzing noise of bees on a journey that appalled my mind, but the litre of sachet water and biscuits packs and other everywhere.

When I bought a sachet of the 'pure' water and gulped, I couldn't see anywhere to dispose the pack. This was at the Boro Park. I asked the vendor where I could dispose the sachet, and he told me that I should drop it on the ground. “As you can see, there is no basket to dispose it”, the young boy told me.

Though, I may not be a saint. But it pricked my mind of how I was going to drop the 'pure' water sachet on the ground, knowing the social implication. The little boy, watching how contemplative I was in the disposal of the sachet, grabbed the ten naira I was going to pay him and didn't care what happened next. It was a maddening afternoon and I watched people buying 'pure' water and was dropping the sachets anywhere their hands reached, not in any bin, and there is none.

It is a 'mindsore', not only a eyesore, that a city like Port Harcourt that wears the crown of the Treasure Base of Nigeria, its environmental sanitation agency is still 90km away from being perfect in the handling of dirt in the area.

While I was inside the bus, some group of fiercely looking young men accosted buses and asked the driver of the vehicle that I was inside, “Oga, where is your vehicle basket?” When the driver showed the receipt that he had bought the sanitation basket, the haggard young men left and preyed on other vehicles. Later I was meant to understand that the cost of the basket was not less than N5, 000. True or false, I shouldn't be hold responsible because it was news from hearsay.

When the bus set on motion from the point the young men accosted us, I looked around inside the bus, but couldn't see the 'almighty' basket. This happened when a woman close to me threw a pack of ice cream she had finished sucking away through the side glass. While I watched the ice cream pack found a resting place beside the barricade demarcating the two expressways, the sight was of disgust and sabotage, because little-by-little dump of litre, the whole place is becoming a city of refuse.

Notwithstanding, there are women who sweep the express roads on a daily basis. I think they do this to create the image of decency to onlookers or foreigners, whereas the streets are not purged of mammoth dirt.

While the agency responsible for the sanitation might be working with millions of naira mentioned created and expended on keeping the environment clean, I wonder yet why the whole of Rivers State is as dirty as an uncouthed pig. Everywhere smells in Port Harcourt, apart from the Government House.

Yes, in virtually the junctions in the state, people are advised to heap their refuse so that it could be evacuated before 7.00am. yet, those refuse brought out by residents from their different abodes, becomes the monuments of a lost city to garbage and some Nigerians feed, scavenging these inglorious monuments.

Today, the increase of mosquito in unmentionable in Port Harcourt, the mosquitoes are as big as competing with flies. Because, I guess, they feed fat on these leftover wastes and their immune now resist any form of insecticides. And people in the state do not discuss any of the problems besetting the state without mentioning the menace of mosquitoes. And this issue is taking the lead.

Whenever I take a look at our beloved Rivers State, especially on its environment and the untidy nature, I am not left without sorrow in my mind. I know that civilization has its good and doom, but the later is grapping the state so badly, with dirt everywhere. Even when these wastes are excavated into the waste trucks, because the top of the trucks are not covered, the dirt poured into them still pour back from the trucks on our streets immediately the trucks set on motion.

Except in Nigeria, I wouldn't know if why people in other climes join politics is to create job opportunities for their cronies while others who do not have politicians as 'fathers' should blaze to ashes. Not even that those jobs were created for are reliable and would work. Thjey only do the works on the pages of the newspapers.

Rivers state is suffering a great deal of waste management. On all the radio stations in the state is announcement of millions of naira the state government has created for the management of waste in the state, whereas in the streets, wastes remain unmanaged. It is high time this agency for the management of waste in the state deployed baskets to all the nooks and crannies of the state. The baskets should not be sold to residents. After all, Port Harcourt is not the only Local Govt. Area in Rivers State.

Odimegwu Onwumere is the Founder of Poet Against Child Abuse (PACA), Oyigbo, Rivers State. +2348032552855. [email protected]