Bauchi State Environmental Protection Agency (BASEPA) and the National Orientation Agency (NOA) have agreed to embark on rigorous sensitization and awareness campaigns on the recent report by the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NIMet) and the Nigerian Hydrological Services Agency (NHSA) on possible torrential rainfall in the coming month of September.
This is part of the discussion between the Director General of BASEPA, Dr Ibrahim Kabir and the Deputy Director of NOA, Mrs Theresa Onuga, during an advocacy visit to the Agency.
Theresa Onuga noted that NiMET and NHSA have forecast possible torrential rainfall in the month of September, adding that the federal government directed NOA to embark on serious awareness campaigns in order to make people aware of the development and to prepare, which NOA consider BASEPA as an important stakeholder on that regard.
She also said that water flooding comes along with many problems, apart from the loss of lives, livestock and food items, the disaster also destroyed properties as well outbreak diseases as a result of decontamination of water sources among others.
The Deputy Director acknowledged the commitments of BASEPA in ensuring cleanliness in the state which she said is greatly helpful in reducing the occurrence of flooding in some of the flood hotspots location the metropolis.
She also opined that drainage desilting is an important activity in the reduction or averting of the disaster and appealed for intensifying the activities of the House to House Sanitary Inspectors(Duba Gari) and the inclusion of religious and traditional leaders for grassroots mobilisation towards achieving the goals of the awareness campaigns.
The Director General while welcoming the delegation to the Agency, said that he was glad for considering BASEPA as a relevant stakeholder in this exercise and assured his Agency’s readiness to collaborate symbiotically to achieve the target objectives.
He also informed the delegation that the Agency has conducted what is called an environmental scan, which is still ongoing in order to identify the numerous environmental problems across all the twenty local government areas so as to know which and which LGAs are vulnerable to what and what environmental problems and how best to tackle it, hence the activities of the area offices of the Agency differs.
Ibrahim Kabir added that as part of the pre-disaster activities, especially water flooding the Agency introduced an initiative tagged “MY PREMISES MY DRAINAGES” where people are responsible for desilting of drainages in front of their houses or business premises while the Agency will mobilise machinery to evacuate the garbage.
According to him, the Agency, on the other hand, is only responsible for drainages considered no man’s land; drainages in front of public places such as Schools, Hospitals or Government offices, according to him, this also greatly reduced the occurrence of water flooding.
”The Agency also operates in an inclusive manner, which is why every staff is aware of the causes and mitigation measures against flooding and can also professionally speak towards enlightening the general public.”
He added that BASEPA established a unit in the Department of Environmental Conservation and appointed a desk officer on Disaster management, who served as a liaison officer between SEMA, NIMET and NHSA so as to work on the same page and also help the Agency to take some certain actions and decisions.
On the issue of waste management, the DG informed the NOA delegation that BASEPA recently banned the dumping of refuse by the roadside which contributed a lot towards reducing the occurrence of flooding and is in the process of introducing street waste vendors that will be collecting waste from shop owners or households and taking it to nearest collection centres, the initiative the DG said, create employment opportunities and income generation to the vendors.
Another issue discussed is the activities of house-to-house inspectors (Duba Gari) where the DG promised that BASEPA will train one thousand volunteers who are with NOA as sanitary Inspectors for them to talk to communities as professionals environmental officers towards achieving the desired objectives as contained in a statement by Isyaka Laminu Badamasi, SA Media to Director-General, BASEPA.