Apparently worried about the indiscriminate dumping of waste in most of the shorelines, a conservationist has called on the Federal Government to immediately embark on the implementation of the Marine Pollution Law to safeguard the nation’s beaches and ocean.
Speaking during the 2022 Earth Day’s Celebration at Marwa Beach in Lagos, the Chief Research Officer, Nigerian Institute of Oceanography and Marine Research (NIOMR), Mrs Oyeronke Mojisola Adegbile, stated that the nation has enough laws that talked about marine litters, waste disposal and management, but that enforcement has always been the challenge.
Adegbile, who doubles as the International Coastal Cleanup Coordinator Nigeria, Ocean Conservancy, bemoaned the high level of degradation suffered by the nation’s waterways, beaches, towns and general environment as a result of indiscriminate dumping of waste.
Earth Day is an annual event on April 22 to demonstrate support for environmental protection. First held on April 22, 1970, it now includes a wide range of events coordinated globally by EarthDay.org including one billion people in more than 193 countries. The official theme for 2022 is ‘Invest in our planet.’
Irritated by indiscriminate dumping of refuse at Marwa Beach in Lagos, which her organisation took time out to clean-up in order to prevent pollution of marine lives, Adegbile pointed out that such a beach is supposed to have coast guards, whose responsibilities are to ensure security of the area by putting on flags to know when the beach is safe for people to swim and when it is not safe.
She attributed poor implementation of marine laws to lack of capacity, ignorance and so many other factors, suggesting that time has come for the government to walk the talks and enforce these laws
She said, “We have a lot of laws, enforcement has been a challenge. For example we have the Marine Pollution Law that talks about marine litter, disposal and others, but the enforcement is challenging because the capacity in this area is lacking.
“There is a need for us to have the manpower to enforce the laws, especially the ones that are talking about the sea. Because we do not live in the sea, we are more concerned about land law. It is the right time we concern ourselves with the implementation of laws related to the sea because 70 per cent of the earth surface is covered by water. There is a need for a change in the way of enforcement of these laws; there needs to be an improvement in enforcing the laws.”
Justifying the annual celebration of Earth Day, the Chief Research Officer at NIOMR, said it has presented environmentalists around the world the opportunity to celebrate modern earth, keep it cleaner and healthier for sustainable development.
“Usually on the earth day, everyone is always thinking how do we save the mother earth because we all know that the planet on which we depend, if we do not keep it intact, we have no where to stay,” she said.
Adegbile, who is the founder and Conservation Director at Marine and Coastal Conversation of Nigeria, recalled how she led her team in 2018 for the clean-up at Oniru Jetty in Victoria Island, pointing out that this year’s celebration of Earth Day and the clean up exercise at Marwa Beach on the Teamseas project of the Ocean Conservancy, was all about taking out trash from the beaches.
She explained that her team aimed to take out thousands of trash from the nation’s waterways and beaches. “This is because waterways, beaches, our environment and towns are suffering a lot of degradations as a result of illegal dumping of waste like what we are seeing here at Marwa Beach, where a whole load of trash and organic matters are left on the edge of the ocean, and it is just going to take one heavy rain for everything to go into our ocean.
“This will contaminate the water in the ocean, contaminate the fish, contaminate the other aspect of the ocean and contaminate the air we breathe. So it is essential that we keep our ocean and waterway clean because they will ultimately impact on our health – our environmental health.”
“So this is why we are marking Earth Day, marking it with beach clean-up whereby we have been able to remove thousands of trash from our marine environment. All these trash we are removing would have otherwise gone into the ocean and contaminated the ocean,” Adegbile said.
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