As Nigeria joins the world to celebrate International Day for Zero-waste, IFEDAYO OGUNYEMI examines the challenges facing the adoption of proper waste management practices by the government and the people among other issues.
Indiscriminate refuse dumping is, no doubt, a leading cause of environmental pollution in Nigeria today. Many a time, people often find peace by placing piles of refuse-filled plastic bags at the media of roads, rivers, bushes and other unathorised places.
Though there’s no publicly available data on implementation of anti-improper waste disposal laws and policies by many Nigerians, checks on past media reports showed that there appears to be an uptick in the number of arrests and convictions of environmental offenders in the country.
FILE PHOTO: Two youths openly defecating in a drainage.
Relying on a 2022 report by the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), a Business Day analysis found that over 32 million metric tonnes of waste are generated annually in Nigeria. The analysis also noted that Nigeria was among the top 20 nations that contribute about 83 percent of the total volume of land-based plastics that end up in the oceans.
Similarly using a World Bank report, the analysis estimated that an average of 0.51 kilogrammes of waste is generated daily by each Nigerian, adding that the national outlook is projected to rise to 107 million tonnes by 2050.
With a 28.30 rating, the Environmental Performance Index (EPI) of the Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy, Yale University, United States, ranked Nigeria 162nd of 180 countries. Such rating means that Nigeria stands in the worst 20 ranking in the world and falls in the worst 6 ranking in Africa.
It also ranked Nigeria 126th (10th best in Africa) countries with the highest number of controlled solid (household and commercial) waste “in a manner that controls environmental risks” with a rating of 16.70.
This metric that counts waste as “controlled” includes when solid waste is treated through recycling, composting, anaerobic digestion, incineration, or disposed of in a sanitary landfill.
In another ranking, the EPI also ranked Nigeria 152nd (21st worst in Africa) with a rating of 12.70 in the area of waste management.
Meanwhile, many environmental analysts and observers have condemned the widespread phenomenon of indiscriminate waste disposal with some of them hinging the spread on the lax environmental laws and policies in the country. Some others, however, blamed the public’s behaviour, poor perception and poverty for the increase in improper waste disposal.
Checks by Sunday Tribune showed that though many state governments have devised means to curb indiscriminate waste disposal, many citizens are still at peace in engaging in such practices.
Such is the case of Hammed Tijani (not real name), a worker at a factory located in the Oluyole area of Ibadan.
As he prepares to leave for work at dawn, he occasionally tosses a plastic bag filled with household waste into the Ogunpa River Drainage Basin which is located close to his house at the Popo Yemoja axis of the state capital.
He told Sunday Tribune that he does this because it has now become expensive to engage the services of local waste cart-pushers and the organised waste truck drivers.
Tijani admitted that though he doesn’t always feel convenient with disposing waste into the canal, he said he lives hand-to-mouth and doesn’t have enough income to overspend on proper waste disposal.
When Sunday Tribune visited the axis on Thursday, clusters of solid and plastic waste were seen on different parts of the canal. Some of the waste are being carried along by the flowing river.
It was also observed that bad odour oozes out from some of the sections of the canal.
Residents of Ibadan who engage in indiscriminate waste disposal like Tijani are usually prey for environmental officers tasked with the duty of ridding the state of improperly-managed waste.
Checks by Sunday Tribune showed that earlier in the year 2024, the Oyo State government arrested 19 persons for various environmental offences in different parts of the state as announced by the Oyo State Commissioner for Environment and Natural Resources, Abdulmojeed Mogbonjubola.
The commissioner further explained that any member of the public caught disposing of refuse in unauthorised places will be liable to pay a fine of 110,000 or a month community service.
In a related event, the Oyo State government, in May 2023, announced that over 4,000 environmental offenders were arrested, prosecuted and punished in Oyo State since 2019 with over N30 million paid as fines into the coffers of the government.
Chairman, Oyo State Environmental Task Force, Mr Francis Ojomo, who made the disclosure during the trial of some environmental offenders before the Environmental Protection Tribunal in the state enjoined the public to obey environmental laws of the state, towards sustaining the healthiness and good neighbourliness in the society in consonance with Item 11 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations (UN), which places a premium on sanitation and sustainable environment.
“We do not need to attend any formal school to take care of our environment in our own interest,” he added.
Not just in Oyo, but across the country
Sunday Tribune reports that the clamp down on indiscriminate waste disposal is not peculiar to Oyo State, as it is the case with many other states in the country.
For instance, a quick internet search showed that in 2019, a police officer and 40 residents of Osogbo, Osun State including nursing mothers and schoolchildren were arrested for allegedly dumping waste on the roads.
Operatives of Osun Waste Management Agency (OWMA) were going round the Osogbo metropolis in their truck when they apprehended the defaulters.
This happened after the agency held a meeting with stakeholders, market men and women, security operatives, journalists, local government and LCDA officials, Administrative office representatives among others on how to develop a blueprint for the implementation of environmental sanitation in the state.
One of the offenders, Mrs Afusatu Abdulsalam, was said to have blamed OWMA officials for not coming to the area to pick up the refuse for about a month.
Similarly, in Ogun State, 124 persons were arrested and convicted of openly defecating in public and unauthorised places across the state in 2021. About 84 of the person’s arrested were from Mowe-Ibafo in the Obafemi Owode Local Government Area of the state.
About 30 persons were arrested by the The Anambra State government through Operation Keep Clean and Healthy (Ocha Brigade) in October 2023 for committing environmental offences in the state. The shops of some of the defaulters, some of whom are entrepreneurs, were shut by the government.
Chairman of St Mary Traders Association, Mr Obinna Umeh, said even though they cleared the drainage in the area around thrice, the drainage gets filled up again because of tunnel closure.
Another great move in the spirit of achieving proper waste management in Nigeria is the growing ban by states on the use of single-use plastics, otherwise known as styrofoam. The use of styrofoam has been prohibited in Lagos and Oyo State and many observers are hoping that more states in the country will follow in the footsteps and ban same.
Commenting on the harmful environmental practices, an environmental health officer, Oluwafemi Sarumi, listed the impediments facing proper waste disposal in Nigeria to include poverty and hunger, poor implementation of laws and regulations, ignorance, insanitary practices and poor attitude, inefficient waste management infrastructures, low investment in R&D initiatives, economic instability affecting stakeholders involved in resource recovery, poor public infrastructures/road network, poor maintenance culture and weak political will.
“An impoverished and malnourished population will always find it difficult to understand the rudiments of waste management or adhere to extant rules of sanitary waste management. This explains why poverty and hunger are major objectives of SDGs, as without proper and regular feeding, the body system, behavioural and cognitive balance will be adversely altered.
“People who constantly struggle to feed are more liable to dispose used products insanitarily. For those who have a better level of environmental awareness, disposing their wastes to service providers at a cost could be an uphill task. With over 70 million Nigerians living in extreme poverty (depending on less than $1.25 daily), the possibility of achieving zero waste remains more obscure,” he explained.
Speaking further, Sarumi urged all members of the public to engage in the minimisation of waste in their respective domains, particularly with the reduction in the use of plastic bags whenever they visit the markets.
“It will do us more good if we can use the plastic bags in our homes rather than get a new one whenever one is out to get stuff and products for use at home. This invariably reduces the sale and production of plastic bags and trickles down the waste generation ladder.
“Even when you generate solid and liquid waste, don’t dispose of them anyhow or anywhere. The government at the collection and management level should dispose sanitarily.
“We all need to do more because whatever we give to the environment, the environment gives back to us. People need to cultivate the habit of patronising PSPs to dispose of waste legally. Do not burn your waste or throw them into flood water.
“Another approach is to segregate the waste at the source by separating and storing them according to kind for the ease of recycling. It is always a challenge to sort wastes after collection. The cost of sorting and the economic loss is very high,” he said.
Despite noting that the country presently lags behind in terms of proper waste management practices, he expressed optimism that achieving zero waste in Nigeria is possible, adding that “we need to get our acts and key actions right.”
“The world has moved away from the pristine waste management practice to a circular economy where we can achieve zero waste and nothing is considered a waste.
“Whatever is being used is being fed back into the system and nothing is going for a final disposal at landfills and all sorts which is not sustainable. Zero waste is achievable. It may not be possible by 2030 as projected but it is achievable and we need to get our acts right.
“We generate a high level of biomedical waste from hospitals and laboratories and they have serious consequences for the environment. We also have liquid, gaseous and animal wastes that are giving us problems but with necessary steps and actions, we’ll get there,” he said.
He also condemned the acts where water resources that are not enough for human use are being contaminated, adding that the indiscriminate disposal of waste by the people also affects the aesthetic of the communities.
“It aggravates flooding and propagates diseases and ill health and a lot of water bodies and channels are clogged. All of these things are connected to improper disposal of waste. Anywhere you see waste, you see pests and then they live to torment humans and plants. The effect of indiscriminate waste disposal is enormous but the country is moving at a very slow pace in terms of proper waste management practices. We all just need to be intentional about it,” he added.
The widespread indiscriminate disposal of waste was part of the reasons many countries of the world agreed, under the aegis of the United Nations on December 14, 2022, to set aside March 30th of every year to commemorate the International Day of Zero Waste to raise awareness for zero-waste initiatives and their contribution to achieving sustainable development.
Information provided on the UN website warned that “humanity’s unsustainable production and consumption practices are driving the planet towards destruction.”
The UN also noted that “households, small businesses and public service providers generate between 2.1 billion and 2.3 billion tons of municipal solid waste every year – from packaging and electronics to plastics and food.
“However, global waste management services are ill-equipped to handle this, with 2.7 billion people lacking access to solid waste collection and only 61–62 per cent of municipal solid waste being managed in controlled facilities. Humanity must act urgently to address the waste crisis.”
The agency, however, called for more initiatives that will contribute towards the advancement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
The post further read: “Improving collection, recycling and other forms of sound waste management remain an urgent priority.
“But to solve the waste crisis, humanity must treat waste as a resource. This entails reducing waste generation and following the lifecycle approach. Resources should be reused or recovered as much as possible, and products should be designed to be durable and require fewer and low-impact materials. Upstream solutions like these can minimise pollution of air, land, and water and decrease the extraction of precious and limited natural resources.
“Achieving zero-waste societies requires action at all levels from all stakeholders.
“Consumers can change consumption habits and reuse and repair products as much as possible before properly disposing of them. Governments, communities, industries and other stakeholders must improve financing and policymaking, especially as the waste crisis disproportionately impacts the marginalised, urban poor, women and youths.”
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