The North East Development Commission (NEDC) has identified a lack of waste management as the cause of flooding in Nigeria.
The commission stated this in a communique issued after a three-day training workshop for youth on waste management in Taraba.
Correspondent reports that 150 participants and scavengers were presented with certificates of award after the three days intensive workshop on how to turn waste to wealth and make a clean environment to avoid bleeding of mosquitoes and eradication of flooding and other natural disasters.
The eleven paragraph communique, the commission stressed the need for collaboration between developmental partners NGO, multinationals, government and community members to establish waste pickers associations and education opportunities for youths at dump sites.
“Legislation on waste management and pollution control bill to recognise the importance of scavengers in waste management.
“Waste posed serious health and environmental problems that promote insects ‘vectors like mosquitoes and flies, fire hazard, flooding of streams and development of organic weeds, odours and nuisance to the environment.
“Strategies to manage solid waste and utilisation such as reduce, reuse and recycling of disposable waste materials by composting using microorganisms.”
It further stated that energy can be recovered from solid waste that involves the application of different technology such as anaerobic digestion, combustion/incineration, gasification and pyrolysis in the conversion of solid waste materials into other important and various forms that include electricity, useable heat and fuel referred to as waste-to-energy technologies.