Abuja- Mr Augustine Ebisike, Registrar/Chief Executive Officer of the Environmental Health Officers Registration Council of Nigeria (EHORECON), on Thursday urged Nigerians to properly manage sewage and sustain clean environment.
Ebisike told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja, that such attitude would promote a healthy environment.
He said that if sewage was properly managed, people would indirectly be contributing to a better atmosphere of the environment.
“Sewage management is a big problem that most cities are facing, people take waste to a nearby stream and it causes disease and infections.
“That is the reason in the dry season we experience cholera outbreak, how can there be such disease when there are no rain, such sickness comes during the rainy season.
“The reason is that sewage has entered into such stream and people fetch such water to drink, use it for cooking, bathing and farming,’’ he said.
Ebisike said that the council had investigated across the country and discovered that there was no sewage treatment in most of the urban cities.
He said that people should avoid bad habit of keeping their waste bin for a long time, adding that such attitude could cause deadly diseases such as hepatitis, typhoid, and cholera.
”Such diseases kill millions of people,” he said.
Ebisike said benefits of living in a healthy environment could not be over-emphasised, adding, “Nigerians must avoid the acts of littering waste indiscriminately and other social vices that disrupt the environment.
The registrar said that there were different ways that could help to tackle the problem of sewage such as education, laws and economics which worked together as a team.
“We should educate ourselves on ways to clean our environment, whosoever causes pollution in our environment should stop and remove the cause.
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“We also manage sewage by flushing toilets to take sewage waste quickly and hygienically away from our homes.
“We can pass laws that will make pollution harder and the country less-polluted.
“It takes individual action to help reduce pollution by using environment-friendly detergents,” he said.
Ebisike said that Nigerians could also take community action in cleaning the beaches, rivers and streams communally.
He noted that monthly environmental sanitation was cancelled in the FCT because people were not co-operating with the exercise.
“People use that day as their resting and relaxing day, which is not supposed to be; people supposed to come out en mass and join hands in cleaning their environment.
“As for me, monthly environmental sanitation should be a daily routine, where people should take it as a habit and ensure that they clean their environment daily.
“They should not wait until when the government authorities will mandate them, that is not fair,’’ he said.
He, however, advised Nigerians to have attitudinal change on how to keep their environment clean so as to promote healthy environment. (NAN)