Scholar, Others Raise Concern Over Unabated Environmental Pollution

A Professor of Immunology at the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, Arinola Ganiu, has been emphatic in his condemnation of unabated environmental pollution.
According to Ganiu, women with high exposure to oil pollution experience more adverse pregnancy outcomes.
“They are at higher risk of infant mortality and stillbirths,” the professor added in the survey, conducted on effects of oil spills and and other activities that constitute pollutants on the environment.
He said that oil spills increase the risk of low birth weight .
Ganiu also said that exposure to gas flaring, industrial pollution and exhaust fumes emitted into the atmosphere adversely affects health as they contain carbon monoxide which is a poisonous gas.
According to him, prolonged exposure to these pollution agents may result in coughing, breathlessness, asthma and other adverse health conditions.
In his response, a physician, DrAkinropo Olawumi, said that open defecation constitutes a major public health problem which should be urgently addressed.
Olawumi said that open defecation could easily lead to disease outbreaks like respiratory illnesses, cholera, typhoid, diarrhoea and tuberculosis.
According to him, water supply becomes contaminated with germs and bacteria due to open defecation.
Mr James Olaore, a Director in the Oyo State Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, said that open defecation was a major health and environmental challenge, but added that the government was not folding its arms.
According to Olaore, the present administration in the state is taking the challenge head on by organising sensitization rallies, constructing public toilets and strengthening its water and sanitation programme.
As for farmers in Kwara State, they say a major environmental challenge facing them particularly during the dry season, is indiscriminate bush burning.
According to them, this not only constitutes a health risk because of carbon monoxide dispersed into the atmosphere, but also economic loss due to farms that are destroyed.
Mr BabatundeAudu, one of the farmers said that part of his farm was burnt recently without him seeing the perpetrators who fled after causing the havoc.
“I got to the farm very early around 7 a.m, but to my surprise, part of my cassava farm has been burnt. I cried and felt bad because I don’t
know who was responsible for such act,” Audu said.
A rice farmer, Mr Ezekiel Obadare, said he was worried because most of the farms around him were burnt already.
“My mind is not settled at all since we are gradually entering the peak of the dry season. We always suffer from this bush burning crisis every dry
season.
“Almost all the rice farms surrounding mine are burnt. It is not good because people don’t just care about others, they only care about
themselves. We suffer a lot during dry season,” Obadare said.
Similarly, Mr BayoAina, a farmer said that bus burning had caused havoc in most farms in Kwara.
environment and open defecation.
“It is now an offence in the state for anyone to build a house without constructing at least a toilet under the Operation One-House, One-Toilet,” Fakunle- Okieimen said.
Also, MrBamideleFaparusi, the Commissioner for Public Utilities and Infrastructure, said that Ekiti State government had declared a state of emergency in the WASH sector and initiated a road map to make the state Open Defecation Free by 2022.
Faparusi said government, in its determination to ensure a safe environment had also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with UNICEF.
He said the memorandum with UNICEF was as a result of a damning report that Ekiti was the second in open defecation practice in the country.
Faparusi said government would embark on the construction of public toilets across the 16 local government areas of the state, in collaboration with UNICEF to drastically reduce open defecation.