RCDII to spend N60mn in Lagos, other cities to check environmental degradation     

A non-governmental organization (NGO), Resource Conservation Development Initiative International (RCDII), has said it is planning to establish a pilot system of waste recycling facilities in the cities of Lagos, Port Harcourt and Abuja.
The facilities will cost the sum of N60 million to build.
Afoke Igwe, who is an environment campaigner for the NGO, told BusinessDay in a recent interview that the option to expand to other cities across Nigeria is also being considered so that other states can emulate what she called professionalisation and commercialisation of efficient waste management systems.
“Each of the pilot projects will cost N20 million or N60 million in total and create employment and business opportunities for unemployed Nigerians. The project will be executed in partnership with the federal ministry of environment, the Abuja Environmental Protection Agency, the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) and volunteers”, she said.
Igwe further noted that the NGO had learnt essential economic lessons internationally that Nigerians need to be taught, such as the use of egg shells in Uganda to design floors, as well as plastic bottles to construct fences or make bricks and bottle corks to make barricades.
Nigeria remains challenged by problems of poor environmental sanitation despite repeated efforts by the federal and state governments towards environmental conservation.
The five states of Benue, Oyo, Ekiti, Lagos and Abia especially remain untidy and have been ranked as the nation’s dirtiest states by a recent survey.
The survey conducted using community-led total sanitation (CLTS), a survey tool deployed and supported in the country by UNICEF and the UK Department of International Development (DFID), ranked Ekiti as the state with the highest number of persons who openly defecate in Nigeria.
It also stated that about 1.8 million residents of the state, out of a total population of 2.7 million, are believed to engage in the unhygienic practice that causes epidemics and many deaths.
Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital and one of the most populated states in the country, has overstretched its housing, healthcare, road and waste management system infrastructure to the limits, resulting in the emergence of shanties, slums or ghettos that reflect one of the poorest of all environmental conditions within Nigeria.
Another state with one of the poorest environmental conditions is Benue, and Makurdi, its capital, lacks the features of a modern day state capital, with 80 per cent of the city lacking potable drinking water despite the existence of the River Benue by-passing the city.
Also, in Oyo State, Ibadan the capital, which is the third most populated city in Nigeria, remains unimpressive in terms of cleanliness.
For Abia State, which is credited with the production of over 70 percent of all locally produced goods in Nigeria, Aba, its state capital, has been ranked among the dirtiest in the state and in Nigeria, the report said.