Bane of chemical pollution on Nigerian environment

As the campaign for climate change continues to mount, concerns are also increasing on the need for the Federal Government to intensify action on the ban of harmful chemicals that threaten the achievement of an environment friendly Nigeria. In this piece, Daily Trust looks at the concerns raised and other pertinent issues. Nigeria joined the […]

As the campaign for climate change continues to mount, concerns are also increasing on the need for the Federal Government to intensify action on the ban of harmful chemicals that threaten the achievement of an environment friendly Nigeria. In this piece, Daily Trust looks at the concerns raised and other pertinent issues.

Nigeria joined the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) in 2013. It is an international environmental treaty signed in 2001 and effective from May 2004, to eliminate or restrict the production and use of the POPs.

Parties to the convention are to take measures to eliminate the production and use of 35 pesticides and 16 industrial chemicals that have been banned for health or environmental reasons.

The banned pesticides include Alachlor, Aldicarl, Captafol, Chlordane, DDT, Dieldrin, Ethylene oxide, mercury compounds and Loxaphane. The industrial chemicals include Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs), Anthophyllite, Amosite asbestos, and Crocidolite. 

 Over the years, the Federal Government has declared its intention to phase out those chemicals which are hazardous to the environment and health of the people especially mercury, but it has become an onerous task to carry out.  

The need to ban the use of such hazardous chemicals was recently re-emphasized by the Minister of State for Environment, Mr Ibrahim Usman Jibril, when he noted that aside natural occurrences, human activities have increased the concentration of mercury in the environment, and that it is detrimental to human health.

 Equally, experts have pointed out that chemical pollution introduces chemicals into the natural environment, negatively affecting the air, water and soil, adding that when they are concentrated in an area for a period, they can adversely affect the ecosystem and those who live in the area.

In calling for the mop up existing harmful chemicals in the market, the Deputy Dean, Faculty of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Bayero University, Kano, Professor Ibrahim Baba Yakubu, said the effects of chemicals are multifarious because, in the first instance, it is one of the key reasons why we have climate change that we talk about today.

“All of these chemicals are sent into the atmosphere such as Greenhouse Gases (GHG), carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide and sulphur dioxide. All of these are gases and they are chemicals. They are already causing phenomenal change in the average temperature of the planet earth,” he said.

 He explained that chemicals like chromium, zinc and lead are buried in the rocks and that the exploration of mineral resources like gold, copper etc, predisposes them in the land and then it goes into the food system and massively affect the environment.  A typical instance is the infamous Zamfara lead poisoning that had critical effects on the lives of vulnerable people especially children.

  The Representative of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Angela Luh, who spoke at the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Regional Workshop on National Chemical Information Exchange Networks in Support of the Implementation of International Conventions in December 2016, said Africa’s contribution to global chemicals production remains marginal. The chemicals’ sector is expected to play an increasingly important role in the economies of specific African countries.

 In most African countries, industrial and agricultural production has intensified, matched by a corresponding use of chemical inputs and generation of hazardous waste. This chemicals intensification, as termed by the UNEP report, means that synthetic chemicals are fast becoming the largest constituents of waste streams and pollution of which human and habitat are exposed to.

 Luh said Africa has been using pesticides for pest and disease control for over four decades. It is estimated that 2,740 metric tons of obsolete stockpiles of pesticides are in circulation. They are often inadequately stored and may therefore contaminate soil, water, air and food for the habitat. 

Solutions, hurdles to chemical pollution 

As the concerted effort to battle this aspect of environmental degradation continues, Minister Jibril has said the unsavoury development can only be redressed through effective, coherent and coordinated transnational environmental governance.

“Africa’s natural capital loss is estimated at approximately $195 billion annually, thereby undermining Africa’s potential for achieving sustainable development and eradicating poverty,” he added.

The prevalence of these chemicals and the need to mop them is facing hurdles. A director at the environment ministry said it has become completely difficult to ban the use of the listed chemicals in the convention because they enter into the country through illegal importation through the ports and by smuggling through the land borders.

A crafty way to avoid the chemicals being confiscated at the port of entry is to rename them, the official said. Even when they are banned in the international community, they are still brought into Nigeria under different names, noting that it is difficult to monitor such.

 To enforce regulation on the influx of such chemicals, he said, “You must be trained and have the requisite infrastructure for testing so that when you suspect such products, you can easily go to the laboratory and test.

“But in the absence of such, there is little you can do, aside from seizing it; you may likely release them at the end,” the official lamented.

The need for the Federal Government to have more functional laboratories for testing these chemicals on arrival is quite imperative at this point as there seems to be dearth of those facilities.

 The official who also harped on the need to have proper disposal system for expired chemicals, said “There is no adequate infrastructure for monitoring; laboratories are not adequate to meet the demand in Nigeria and there is no proper channel of disposing obsolete or expired chemicals, if they are bad sometimes we don’t have the capacity to dispose, sometimes it has to be taken outside the country,” he stated.

 Although the ozone depleting sources and chemicals are not produced in Nigeria, the official said Nigeria will always key into international treaties that promote a free and sustainable environment. 

He maintained that the country will always domesticate such protocols by making them part of the national laws to achieve the global aims.

Part of doing this is to build more capacity to ensure enforcement. He said, “When you have a ban, it is to ensure that people do not do it irregularly, you should have capacity to track it.”

While commending non-governmental organisations (NGOs) on their complementary efforts to support government’s role in creating awareness, safeguarding the environment and mopping up harmful and outlawed chemicals, the official said it was quite imperative to have more infrastructural capacities to do it properly.

For Prof. Yakubu the solution to avoiding contact with these harmful chemicals is in getting people educated about the environment. 

He advised government to entrench environmental studies into the curricula of primary and secondary schools and enhance them at the tertiary education level.

He said, “It is at this stage that somebody would be worried if one gets to hear that geography is no longer being thought in secondary schools especially in northern Nigeria. 

“This therefore means all these issues about environmental quality, chemicals use, and about choices could not be made available to the populace,” Prof. Yakubu lamented.