The Edo State Commissioner for Environment and Sustainability, Arc. Joshua Omokhodion, says the State Government is progressing along a charted plan to present a cleaner and greener state that transforms waste to wealth with buffers to mitigate the impact of climate change. Omokhodion, in this interview with The Nigerian Observer’s Bill Okonedo, Edward Oseghe and Osarieme Aigbede, says in all of this, the State Government is carrying the populace along as partners and strategic stakeholders in the project. Excerpts:
At a very recent meeting with a group, you did mention that the Edo State Government is set to bequeath a healthy environment to its residents and you called on Edo people to support the State Government to ensure a cleaner, safe, and healthy environment. Could you kindly elaborate on that?
You are right, some time ago, in January, we had a stakeholders’ engagement with the civil society, market women, professional groups and the clergy. The essence of that engagement was to sensitise the people on the need to have a clean and safe environment, particularly in the area of sanitation because we realised that as it were, the culture of cleanliness that Edo was known for in the past has largely been eroded. It has been eroded because of persons coming from different parts of the country, and with the economic activities of our people, there is little or no time to think about the well-being of our people, not even ourselves, such that such cultures in the past where you find situations that you know our mothers and sisters when they wake up in the morning, the first thing they do is to clean the house, and men as the case may be, take their time to clean the surrounding environment.
But these days you find people wake up, even before the day breaks, they’ve jumped out of their beds and are headed to their various places of work or offices. That has constituted the faulty situation we find ourselves in the city today. I don’t want to be derogatory. It is some sense of indiscipline that has recently enveloped us. For instance, we see someone walking on the street and having a sachet of water, and when he finishes, instead of looking for a place to dump it, you find that he trashes it anywhere, and he moves on.
That’s the essence of that engagement meeting and we thought that we, can’t be doing the same thing all the time and expect a different result.
We must use this time to ensure that people begin to own their environment and make the decision for a clean environment.
It then becomes sustainable over a long period because it’s coming from the citizens and they’re now taking ownership.
That’s why we had those stakeholders’ meetings and the people to a large extent agreed that that was the way to go. What we need to do is to see how to create that enabling environment for our people to be able to do the needful.
We have the Local Government Chairmen who came in a few months ago and by the natural phenomenon, virtually in all strata of society, environmental sanitation or refuse collection is domiciled within the Local Government Councils, because refuse generation is local.
However, because there is a local government administration at the state level, the local government can at least be supervised. That is why we feel strongly that the government, in collaboration with the local councils will be the ones to implement the policies we are trying to put across as a state and ensure that we have a clean, safe, and healthy environment.
Now the rainy season is right around the corner, what are you doing about flooding? We understand that a serious part of the problem of flooding is the disposal of refuse in the drains.
You are right. You see the gross indiscipline and humongous activities at the formal and informal levels. It boils down to indiscipline because I don’t see the reason why the government is constructing drains to help solve the problem of flooding within people’s vicinity and the same people will be there to seal those drains, it’s an aberration and that’s why we’ve decided that we can no longer continue this way.
We are going the extra mile to enforce it to ensure that the laws of the land are obeyed. For instance, if we begin to see people doing all sorts, we can at least prosecute and use them as a deterrent to others.
What we are doing right now, is that because the rainy season is almost here, the government to a large extent is engaging contractors to desilt the drains around the city such that we can help in the free flow of water when the rains come.
In addition, Mr.Governor feels strongly that the Local Governments are meant to be the ones in charge of sanitation, but there seem to be some gaps in the sense that the internal capacities of some of these councils have become cumbersome in such a way that they are not able to deliver much on their mandate.
For example, the waste managers who are responsible for the carting away of the refuse are not able to deliver the capacity to do them. For it to be working in that space, we have trucks, compactors, tippers, manpower, more often than not, you see situations where even some of those managers, their trucks in itself are even for dump sites because they don’t have enough economic power to do what they need to do. They’re interested in the business, but can’t deliver.
What Mr. Governor is doing, starting with Benin City, he has chosen to support what the council is supposed to be doing, because the councils were the ones that took it when the state tried as much as possible to step into the situation on realisation that the councils are not able to deliver.
We still have the waste management board to which we gave the mandate to ensure that this whole ecosystem is as nicely operated as possible. They took the council to court and they said that all of these activities are within their purview. That has weakened the strength of the state to support sufficiently. But going forward Mr. Governor suggested that he understands that is the constitutional rule of law, but there is a need to support them. That’s why procurement is on for the acquisition of compactors to come into the state and help with refuse disposal. And if you look around the city, you can find quite a few.
The Governor said the council has already taken us to court, but somehow, we all play within the same space, as Edo State belongs to all of us, and the Government of Hon Obaseki is in an attempt to create an enabling environment for us to live healthily and be able to do business and do well.
Procurement is on for the acquisition of at least five compactor trucks that will service the major roads of Benin City to help clean the environment because we find that sometimes we the citizens try to even bring out our waste, but in some cases even when we see one that will call themselves environmental sanitation organization, they don’t cart away all the waste because of the weakness of the waste managers.
Mr. Governor has decided to intervene and bring in the manpower and see how it can complement the activities of the existing bodies in the councils. It’s not an attempt to take away their duties but to help them and support them to build capacity, so they can do better, such that in the next 30-60 days, we’ll start experiencing something better than what we are seeing right now in Benin City.
How about the channelling of flood water, are we receiving information about dams that will lift shutters and when they lift the shutters, is there any early warning system?
Yes. Recently I got instruction from Mr. Governor to bring out a detailed mitigation plan to take charge of those challenges that might likely come up when the situation arises. This is exactly what I’m even doing as you can see, Edo State Flood Emergency Response Plan, this is exactly what I’m working on now. I can assure you that Mr. Governor is on top of it.
Mr. Governor was proactive in such a way that the Ministry of Public Safety and Security at the time was mandated to take responsibility to ensure that kind of challenge doesn’t emanate to casualty, ensure that there are proper mitigations in place in case we had those challenges. Right now, what Mr. Governor is trying to do is to see how they can plug in some long-term mitigation plans and medium mitigation plans, such that at the end of the day, we can see results because we cannot stop what happens, we cannot stop water and the rain from coming, we cannot stop the dams from doing what they’re meant to do across the nation. I can assure you that we are trying to deal with that situation such that we are proactive enough to ensure that we don’t have to have challenges going forward.
Is there a channel for information between organisations. I think the first and most useful thing is information. Should they be lifting the shutters in our dams, and if you are aware of this, you tell people to move out of the way; what date would certain government agencies begin to move around to inform the public?
We have a mechanism in place that we’ve built in that direction. The Governor in his wisdom decided to create the Ministry of Public Safety and Security. I’m aware that we have gone the extra mile to do all of that and it is a continuous process, it’s not something you do once and expect to be just there, you have to be consistent. Last year, the Ministry of Public Safety and Security has been on that, while we are thinking of the pathways that we can do in terms of construction.
This ministry is creating awareness among the people and making sure that people are lifted from low land to higher land, creating areas, buffer zones, for all of that and also ensuring that there is enough accommodation, food, and medicine so that when those challenges come and we have to move people away from their homes, we have things put in place to ensure their comfort.
Could you kindly tell us more about the refuse bins in the streets?
There are bins around Ring Road. How effective are those bins? It’s not sufficient to have bins and you are not able to optimise them. My take is simple, there must be a reason why people would not just want to drop anything anywhere. That is simple. What Lagos did was that they started a market for waste, such that anyone who had waste would begin to see money in that waste. Therefore, you’ll not want to throw it around. That is the kind of constitution they’re using right now because no number of bins that you have will solve the problem as long as they continue to generate this waste on the street and have that kind of mindset that people have.
The first thing we are doing right now is to set up a recycling plan and to fill that recycling plan is to fill up control centers, such that we can, first of all, settle our waste into different uses, as some are recyclable, some not recyclable, some can be taken back to compost, you separate all of them and make them useful and that is the way I think we should go. If you and I bring up ideas of making money from waste, you’ll not want to throw it away, you’ll want to keep it and generate funds from it. That’s the kind of atmosphere we are trying to create right now within the state and in a few weeks, we will start rolling out our plans.
On tree planting, from Ring Road to The Nigerian Observer on Airport Road is so beautiful, and we have shades, especially at night; it’s very scenic at night. How far will that go? Is there a deliberate plan?
Yes. We are so lucky to have the kind of Governor we have, who has vast knowledge and experience on so many fronts. He called us together, those of us relative to the ecosystem and the environment, he brought us together and told us that one of the major legacies he wants to leave in Edo State is a green environment. He gave us marching orders to quickly come up with a design and a program and if we start that, the next person coming will have something to work on and expand and as I speak with you, we’ve already set up a committee. The new concept for us is not just to clean but to clean and green, and our special scheme will be all the roads adjoining the King’s Square in Benin City.
How do you deal with the environmental nuisance that discarded Styrofoam packages cause?
To a large extent, the Governor has given us a mandate to all of that and yet there are some of these issues that have social implications. So what you do, you have to be systematic about it, and the first process is letting people know that there is a programme to assimilate all those things and immediately after that, the next thing we are saying is we can’t continue to receive all these things from you. There is a need for health reasons leading to this ban, and we need to look into that. There is a ban on Styrofoam for reasons that will be beneficial to the citizens.
We need to bring our market people together and manufacturers of these things and give them a period beyond which we won’t accept these things. We can bring in an incentive system before banning them completely. So that is what we want to attach to all of that, so we don’t hurt our people and citizens.
What about Edo dumpsites?
Mr. Governor gave an instruction that he wants to have a thorough understanding of the dumpsites. We have existing dumpsites but he wants to go beyond what we have right now, such that whatever we have towards dumpsites becomes economical. He’s trying to deliberately create what we call “Waste Worth”, and he’s going to bring in a recycling facility very soon, and he’s expecting us to give him that organ of how we want to do it. We want to do much more than what we are seeing right now. We’ll begin to see major operational works around the dump sites. All of this we are talking about on clearing refuse, we need to take them all to dumpsites, we need to have an effective dump sites sector, and we are also encouraging the private sector to come in and to some extent that is working.
Some are operational already, we need to streamline some of what will be happening, such that from this clearing and cleaning, the dumpsites will not be an issue.
In summary, what do you want to tell Edo people?
All of these initiatives we’ve planned out are for the people of Edo State, and we are simply asking to let them have the advantage of our programmes. We want them to generate ideas on how we can support them, but let them listen and own whatever ideas we have, because in the real sense of it, each of us has different areas of abode, all we are talking about is that wherever we live should be as comfortable as possible.
Therefore, what we are talking about is the people, and what we need them to do is to have that sense of understanding, so that at the end of the day, they’ll have better living conditions and be able to do well in these things because as they say health is wealth.
