In this interview by WALE AKINSELURE, Oyo State Commissioner for Environment and Water Resources, Mr Kehinde Ayoola, speaks on the plans of the current state government to address flooding, street trading, large number of the destitute, ineffective waste management and controversial allocation of forest reserve by immediate past administration for personal good among other issues. Excerpts:
For several years, you were a freelance writer, writing on issues affecting the environment. You also are a consultant on environment. Your appointment as Commissioner for Environment and Water Resources might be an opportunity for you to implement your views on your desired Oyo state environment. As commissioner, what are your set targets for this Ministry under your leadership?
First and foremost, we need to get the mindset of our people tuned away from the attitude of lack of regard for environmental issues, especially, environmental hygiene. By God’s grace, if we are able to do that, we will be able to implement other things like actually driving towards sustainable environment. The people should know that clean air is important towards their own wellbeing; clean water and the land on which we plant crops that gives us food should also be clean. By clean, I do not mean sweeping the land. We should not introduce into the soil any chemical, biological or physical substance that could endanger the health of the soil, because the soil needs to be healthy. If we keep on using chemicals like fertilizer, herbicides, and it does not abate, we are creating problems for ourselves. For example, some herbicides have sulfur compounds; sulfates do not dissolve or disintegrate. So, if you plant maize, the maize has the capacity to take up the sulfate into its system. When somebody eats it, the sulfate goes into the body stream and this gets deposited in bone marrow, liver, spleen, sometimes in the brain, causing problems like cancer. Also, if someone burns bush, you release green house gases and this contributes to global warming which is a big precursor of climate change. So, for the period of time that God will make it possible for us to be here, I want us to have a sustainable environment. I want an Oyo state where players in the environmental sector do so in a sustainable manner; there is no pollution; people obey environmental laws and regulations and the health of our people is better. What we are also doing is primary health care, helping in prevention, and this is better than cure.
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Flooding as an issue in Oyo State has become recurring decimal. In fact, last year, five persons killed by flooding at the Onigbese River. Beyond the rhetoric of asking residents in flood prone areas to temporarily evacuate whenever there is heavy rainfall, what sustainable measures do you plan to take to address flooding in Oyo state?
We are taking a lot of steps. We have the Ibadan Urban Flood Management Project (IUFMP) which is a World Bank assisted programme to address flood in Ibadan and its environs. The IUFMP is under the auspices of the Ministry of Environment and Water Resources; and the ministry of environment as well, through its department of environmental engineering also takes measures to control flooding. The most permanent solution to flooding is to channelize all our rivers and drainages and that will cost quite a lot. By that I mean to build the kind of restrictions that were built into the Ogunpa river. In the Ogunpa river for instance, the base of the river is in concrete, the two sides are concreted, at such a depth and width that will contain the volume of water we are expecting. In our ministry, we are installing early warning system that will give us early warning signals for us to respond between 48 and 72 hours before the rain proper starts. When we install it, we will be able to alert our people early enough. That is to allow our people take proactive measures to mitigate whatever damage may come. In developed countries, anytime that there will be a hurricane, they warn people and people evacuate for government to take proactive measures.
Will that long term concreting and channeling of rivers and drainages commence with this government?
That costs quite a lot but in the absence of the resources to do that, we do dredging of rivers and streams and de-silting of lakes. The Ministry of Environment is in charge of Water Resources and we de-silt that is, remove these sediments in order that the dam or lake can contain the volume it was designed to take ab initio. As for dredging, this involves digging up materials from water courses so that it can contain the volume it is meant to hold. Since we know that water is a universal solvent, even if you dredge last year, water moves and dissolves things, carry materials which will be dumped along the waterways such that there may be blockage at some point. So, we do dredging every now and then; as well as de-silting. But the final solution is to channelize all our rivers and drainages and concreting its base and sides for which we do not have resources for right now.
There are several structures on water ways, do you intend to demolish such structures?
When there was flash flooding at Olodo, I stood at the top of the bridge, looked down into the gully, and saw buildings along the water course. There were watermarks on those buildings, some of them up to lintel, some were totally submerged. That is totally unacceptable. Nobody is happy to demolish people’s building but if that is what we have to do to save lives in those areas, then, we will have to do it. Also, we have sent messages to our colleagues in the town planning department telling them not to give permit to build to people who want to build on floodplains or along water channels. One should not be emotional about it. If a house is blocking flow of water, the house has to go.
From Molete to Agodi gate, street trading is the order of the day. In fact, some say street trading is a custom in Ibadan hence neighbourhood markets have been largely abandoned. What will be this government’s strategy to address street trading?
What made the former government fail in that area is that no serious attempt was made to provide a location for these traders to go. You should be able to provide alternatives. If I want to do a road and I am blocking it, I should be able to provide alternative routes so that traffic is not blocked. We want to take our people off the road. Street trading is dangerous, for example, a vehicle can veer off the road and result in casualties. Also, street trading is not nice to behold; it is an aesthetic assault on the eye especially for visitors and those we want here to start businesses. So, it is chaotic and if we present the picture of a society full of people that are not disciplined, then, we will suffer for it in terms of how acceptable we are to investors outside. Due to this, the government has decided that all street traders should be taken away from the streets and taken to the market places which are being provided as we speak. There is an inter-ministerial collaboration between Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Trade and Investment, the Ministry of Information, Ministry of Works and Ministry of Women Affairs to ensure that this policy is properly taken care of.
Beggars, destitute are also all around Ibadan, the state capital. You probably also consider this as an aesthetic assault and one that could dissuade investors. How do you intend to deal with this set of persons?
The Ministry of Environment is collaborating with the Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Inclusion to take all destitute, beggars, lunatics, Almajiris off our streets. We have a rehabilitation centre at Akinyele local government area but that is currently not adequate. There may be others and places that can be carved out, like colonies, for beggars such that people that want to give alms can go meet them there.
In its way of waste management, the immediate past administration asked residents to drop their litter on the medians. However, heaps of refuse litter our medians and some regard this as an eyesore. What will be this government’s strategy for effective waste management?
We are taking steps to stop dropping refuse on road medians. It is wrong, unsightly and inefficient. One thing I will admit quickly is that our current mode of refuse collection is not efficient. One way we are trying to bring efficiency into the system is to properly map out the whole state. We will introduce community-based refuse collection system whereby refuse in a particular area, street, ward, district would be taken care of by people in that area so that you won’t be looking for your refuse collector that is 20 kilometres away. The contractor is right there in your community living with you. Then, refuse receptacles will be reintroduced. You will discover that in all the streets where you see people putting refuse on the road, there are no bins to collect them. We will reintroduce receptacles and ensure that people put refuse inside the bin and not outside. Some talked about dead bodies being dumped in bins in the past, we have a duty to pack everything in the receptacles, including dead bodies. Then, we have to consider where to dump the waste. The four dumpsites that we have in Ibadan, Awotan, Ajakanga and two others, are no longer adequate. For example, the one in Lapite in Akinyele Local Government Area will be decommissioned because it is too close to the dry port and the railway terminus that is coming there. We have gone to inspect a few sites with the officials of the Ministry of Lands to see where we can relocate this dumpsite to. When we get there, it will be run as a real landfill where there will be decomposting and recycling. We will find a way to use up the waste either to recycle the non-biodegradable component of the waste or to compost the degradables into organic fertilizer or organomineral fertilizer.
Recently you raised the alarm, while alleging that former Governor Abiola Ajimobi allocated 26,000 hectares of the Gambari forest reserve to himself. However, the former government said you failed to check your records and that the said allocation was done under a government policy called Agro-Industrial zones to make land available to large agricultural investors. Was that a false alarm or playing politics?
We were not playing politics. It is a fact that people can go and verify. We have our forest reserves all over the state and when you get there, you will see that there is no agricultural programme or business going on there. The only people who are carrying out anything agriculture are private companies that had come long before them. And there is a company at Gambari reserve that is into fish and poultry production. In addition to what they are doing, they have an agreement to plant back a thousand hectares of forest every year and they have been doing this. But, this other people, ask them to bring the agreement they signed with the state government and you will see that there is no reforestation component to it and that is the difference. The people who did this are unpatriotic, ungodly, evil, wanton prodigal. Even up till now, some of them were given over a year ago and there is no agricultural exercise or venture they are carrying out. Our Opara game reserve which is the largest has 248,000 hectares of forest out of which the past government carved out about 200,000 hectares and started parceling it out to individuals. I have dealt with two threats of communal clashes in those places because the farmers there see it as mindless land grab, taking away their ancestral land, and are ready to resist it. And the Engineer Seyi Makinde administration will not stand idly by while lot bloodletting or killing is allowed to happen. And that is why we are taking these proactive steps to ensure that life is safe, people go about their legitimate duties and we do not fall prey to the greed of a few.