LAST week, nine persons, one of them a cleric, were summarily sentenced to six months in prison by a Magistrate’s Court sitting in Aramoko Ekiti in Ekiti West Local Government Area of Ekiti State for committing environmental health offences. The nine persons who pleaded guilty and were promptly convicted were among the 18 said to have been summoned to court from four communities in the local government area. Meanwhile, a bench warrant has reportedly been issued by the magistrate for the arrest of the remaining nine who refused to honour the court summons. Notable among the infractions committed by the 18 persons, according to the local government environmental health officials, was open defecation. Truth be told, it is absolutely unhealthy and degrading to defecate in open public places. The health hazards associated with the disposal of human waste in such unhygienic and uncivilised manner are often felt beyond the immediate environment as part of the waste usually finds its way through flood to the nearest rivers and brooks when it rains.
Undoubtedly, the importance of sanitation to safeguarding human health is incontrovertible and has significant public health dimensions. Good personal hygiene and environmental sanitation practices, to which open defecation is clearly anomalous, are essential for human dignity, health and wellbeing. Therefore, the seemingly draconian sanction meted out to the nine offenders may be the local government’s way of sending a strong message to its citizens that it will not brook any form of violation of the environmental laws that has the capacity to vitiate public health. That in itself is not bad. After all, laws are made to be obeyed for the good of all. However, the question may be asked as to what the government has provided to warrant its patently awkward action. Has the government provided or facilitated the provision of public toilets in the affected communities? The government cannot fail in its duty to provide the necessary facilities and then expect its directive on one toilet per household to be strictly complied with. Breaches of the law can only be decisively dealt with when the government has diligently played its own part. It is rather oppressive and reprehensible for the citizens to continue to get the short end of the stick due to the government’s apparent failure.
It is instructive to note that those arrested were found defecating in public places and not their houses. And that was because there were no public toilets. Even in public schools and most sections/places in public hospitals, public toilets are a rarity. Therefore, the government should lead the way by providing necessary facilities. That way, criminalising the act will have become unnecessary. Perhaps it should be mentioned that the challenge of access to improved sanitation facilities such as flush latrine or pit latrine is a serious one worldwide. A recent empirical study on the subject revealed that about 2.3 billion people lack access to improved toilet facilities while 892 million people around the world still practice open defecation. We bring this information to the fore not because we encourage poor sanitation practices including open defecation but to underscore the fact that the challenge is not peculiar to the country and that it is unnecessary to resort to somewhat precipitate official action to resolve it. Outright coercion and recourse to legal sanctions has doubtful long-term sustainability, especially when necessary official action by way of provision of public toilets to complement the directive of one toilet per household has yet to happen.
Sadly, there is a sense in which the government tends to come across as being really prompt and efficient in the execution of its mandate that borders on implementation of punitive actions. The level official efficiency and diligence deployed in the apprehension, prosecution and conviction of the environmental health offenders was high. But many are of the view, and perhaps rightly so, that if equal measure of hard work and zeal had been channelled to the delivery of public goods and services by Ekiti West Local Government, the need may not have arisen for the breaches of the law in the first place. To be sure, we see the implementation of the law on good environmental health practices as laudable, but we also know that its long-term success will depend largely on the government doing the needful and giving encouragement to the citizens to own the policy rather than by the application of official coercion.
and then