From Sola Ojo, Kaduna
It is no longer news that most of the climate change and environmental disasters the earth has witnessed and is still witnessing are self-induced through desperate survival activities of humans without minding the survival of other elements that make up the ecosystem.
What is news is the inability of humans to learn from either their personal or others’ sad tales of the consequences of their actions and inactions toward their immediate or remote environment as they grow and expand.
In Nigeria, and Kaduna State in particular, several lives, livestock, farmlands and properties have been lost to ‘natural disasters’ such as fire outbreaks and floods yearly.
In 2022, the Federal Government through the immediate past Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management, and Social Development, Hajiya Sadiya Umar Farouq, said the flood killed at least 603 persons across Nigeria with 1.3 million others displaced while about 82,053 houses were badly affected.
These unfortunate perennial destructions have become what mathematicians would call recurrent decimal despite the policies and laws in place to ensure humans’ activities are checked in such a way that they give room for emerging generations to survive.
For example, one of the environmental laws is the criminal code Act Cap. 77 L.F.N of 1997 which contains the basic criminal law offences that relate to damage to the environment, public health and natural resources.
Again, the Land Use Act Cap. 350, L.F.N 1990 aimed to provide measures for making land easily available for development and agricultural purposes, primarily by vesting land in the states’ governors, requesting their consent for the transfer or alienation of interests in land, and conferring them with power to revoke the right of occupancy for over-riding public purposes.
The governors exercise these functions through relevant ministries, departments and agencies. In Kaduna, the State Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources’ function revolves around policy awareness, enforcement, and intervention through desertification and deforestation, pollution and waste management, climate change and clean energy, flood, erosion and coastal management, and environmental standards and regulations.
With emerging concerns around climate change across the world, a greener, cleaner and safer environment is beyond government alone which is why the media, citizens, development partners and donours are now seen as critical allies in the promotion of climate change mitigation right from the communities level.
As one of the states with the highest presence of civil society and non-governmental organisations in Nigeria, Kaduna enjoys good participation of citizens, especially with the coming of the Open Government Partnership (OGP).
Already, a team made up of the media, civil society, organisations, government, and some individuals have visited some flood-prone communities in Kaduna, trying to assess the causes and level of damage by floods in these communities and see what could be done ahead of August’s heavy downpours.
In Rafin Guza, one of the communities visited, a resident who is an emergency response personnel and firefighter, Awwal Mustapha, lamented how his fellow residents would have to wake up early to curb indiscriminate dumping of refuse on the nearby river bank.
“Our challenges are many here. People used to bring their solid waste from the beginning of Rafin Guza down here. Before, the refuse almost got to the gate of this Government Secondary School. What we are doing is to wake up early to send them back because they usually come before people wake up.
“On the issue of flooding, we don’t have any standard drainage system here. Even the only Government Secondary School we have here does not have one, which is posing serious threats to its newly constructed perimeter fence.
“The contractor only built the fence without drainage and as you can see, the erosion is already eating deep under the fence which means taxpayers’ money is about to be thrown away like trash. We wrote that KADRA copied the Ministry of Education concerning the lack of drainage in the school but nothing has been done about it,” he narrated
Director, Aid Foundation, Mr. Emmanuel Bonet, who is coordinating the team under Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), said: “We found out that there was a lot of encroachment in some areas, indiscriminate dumping of refuse and building on waterways.
“We also noticed that some communities ignore the parameter of land encroachment. Some of the solutions to these identified issues will be immediate while some will be later. All we want to see is that no life is lost and at the same time minimize the impact of downpour, especially as it relates to the urban renewal that we have now.
“The expectations are not expected to be the same in all the flood-prone communities after each rainfall. Some of the immediate solutions are to desilt some of the riverine areas we have access to and pack mountains of refuse to avoid being washed into the river by the rain. For example, we have a lot of dumb sites in places like Angwan Rimi, Malali, Kapala, Kudendan, and Romi.
“In Kabala Doki, people just channel their soakaways directly into the drainage and in some bad instances directly on the road to the extent that you see faeces coming out in real-time. It is not rocket science for you to know that it is the rain that will move that faeces into different communities where children are playing and all that.
“Other people elsewhere also drink and do a lot with the water from the same river. That is a disaster and epidemic waiting to happen. So, we are moving into these areas to sensitise the community people and hold them accountable.
“Government should have been following up. Government should also ensure these things don’t happen. How could you build a house without a toilet, who gave you the approval? These are areas the government needs to come in.”
On her part, executive director, Bridge That Gap, Gloria Kassang Bulus, lamented that the government has not been doing much in terms of mitigating environmental issues in the state.
To her, “we have seen looming environmental issues in the country, including Kaduna State. The immediate past administration would be remembered for ignoring environmental issues as it has to do with agriculture and education.
“In the health sector, we are having environmental issues coming up which we would have been able to mitigate if the environment was well taken care of.
“Even in the educational sector which was said to have received the attention of that administration, we still have issues of poor fencing, landscaping to prevent erosion in our schools. I hope the new administration will make environmental and climate issues its priority.”
Meanwhile, counselor, Sabon Tasha, Dauda Makama, has taken it upon himself to expand a tributary river at Angwan Baro to avoid the destructive flash flood the community has been experiencing over the years.
When contacted through telephone, he said: “We do experience flood in that part of Angwan Baro every year. So, I reached out to the state government for support so we can desilt and expand the tributary to River Kaduna in that area.
“We brought equipment to do the work but along the line, we could not finish up because the river was muddy to the extent that the excavator sank which took us several hours to get it out. We hope that by the end of the year when the rain subsides, we will return to open up that place.”