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Nigeria
Nature’s blessing
ECOLOGY
A country can possess many natural riches, but
with the onslaught of environmental abuses,
air pollution, and all the other negative aspects of what passes for «modern
civilisation»,
nature’s blessings can indeed be in jeopardy. Such is Nigeria’s situation
Nigeria is a large and diverse country blessed with abundant natural resources, including petroleum and solid minerals. It has a population estimated to be around 100 million, and a land mass covering a total area of 923,769 square kilometres, which initially consisted of about 20% forestland concentrated in the southern part of the country, while savannah covered 80% of the rest of the land area.
Threat of devastation
The southern forests include mangrove or coastal vegetation, fresh water swamp and lowland rain forest. However, Nigeria’s forests have been destroyed or degraded by mainly human activities such as wood felling, over grazing, bush burning and many other environmental abuses. In Nigeria’s southern forest zone, the environment is mostly threatened by intensive human activities such as farming, uncontrolled and unplanned urbanization and industrialization, as well as by extensive oil drilling and production particularly in the Delta region.
A great deal of devastation has caused by soil er-osion in the southern states of Imo, Anambra, Rivers, Cross River, Delta, Edo, Akwa-Ibom, among others. Yet deforestation has continued unabated. According to the United Nations Development Programme in 1989, an estimated 90% of Nigeria’s tropical forest had been cleared or degraded, leaving just a small isolated area.
In the North, the landscape has become barren and very hostile because of tree felling and bush burning activities. In the northern states of Katrina, Yobe, Sokoto, Jigwa, Kano, Borno and Kebbi, desertification has reached catastrophic proportions.
The Middle Belt states of Plateau, Kaduna, Nasarawa have all been devastated by the activities of tin mining and mining for other minerals. Environmental problems have been created by the rapid rate of industrialization and urbanization, resulting in industrial and domestic sewage pollution of our air, water and land. The effect of all this has been a decline in agricultural production. The fishing industry has also been badly hit because of water pollution.
A whole range of communicable diseases associated with lack of environmental sanitation, have begun to spread.
The slow poison
According to the magazine «Our Planet», published by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) recently, respiratory infections have been linked to air pollution, causing the deaths of some four million children each year. The lack of clean water and of adequate sanitation contributes to the spread of diarrhoea-related diseases, claiming the lives of more than three million children annually.
In Nigeria, prior to the establishment of the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (FEPA) in 1988, environmental issues were shared by many agencies. But Nigeria’s active participation in the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) in 1987 and the Koko toxic waste crisis of May 1988, compelled Nigeria to adopt a co-ordinated approach to environmental and natural resources management, resulting in the 1988 promulgation of the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (FEPA), aimed at carrying out management and control of pollution in the country in an orderly manner.
Government’s initiative
In 1988 came the approval of a comprehensive National Policy on Environment, and in 1989, the setting up of a National Resource Conservation Council (NARESCON), to address conservation issues in the country. Also, an Environment Assessment Division (EAD) was set up in the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing (FMW&H), to assess the environmental aspects of FMW&H projects throughout the country.
With all these, one would hope that people have now become environmentally conscious and stop tampering with the earth’s natural climatical system!
Now that democracy is in place, people are urging the government to establish specific programmes aimed at improving the environment, such as: Encouraging afforestation in order to combat decertification especially in the northern part of the country; providing appropriate remedial measures to combat beach erosion and sea encroachment particularly in Lagos and other coastal areas; encouraging private participation in sewage and refuse disposal; empowering the States to take active measures for environmental sanitation, and for undertaking research into appropriate technology for waste recycling.
Decisions must be taken in order to protect our environment!
Kenneth Dareng, Nigeria, February 2000 — © Reproduction authorised, with usual acknowledgment
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