Except for a few thousand babies conceived

I call it wastage because like Chief Obasanjo’s 16 billion dollar investment in the power sector, our wasted man-hours yield no commensurate results. Our towns and cities remain as dirty as they’ve always been, by10am every sanitation day, though we have been forced to remain indoors ‘cleaning’ them. May be that is the problem, maybe […]

I call it wastage because like Chief Obasanjo’s 16 billion dollar investment in the power sector, our wasted man-hours yield no commensurate results. Our towns and cities remain as dirty as they’ve always been, by10am every sanitation day, though we have been forced to remain indoors ‘cleaning’ them. May be that is the problem, maybe because we remain indoors, no cleaning ever gets done. What we do know is that our morning strolls and other keep-fit exercises are disrupted.
Early shoppers trying to avoid the weekend market crowd are forced to join the chaos anyway, because from 7 to 10 am all movement is restricted. Hospital and school visits, club activities and weddings are all begun late every last Saturday of the month, but with nothing to show for the inconveniences. When I complained to my friend about the travails of residents of all states and the Federal Capital where this sanitation exercise is observed, due to this three-hour incarceration Umma, who is ever the optimist had this to say:
‘You can’t say that nothing good ever comes out of this exercise, what about all the babies that get conceived?’ She observed, with a smile.
‘Babies that get conceived? Where?’ I asked, perplexed.
‘Let’s face it’ She began ‘some men are too busy pursuing their rat-race lives to have time for their wives on week days. I mean they rush to work or businesses first in the morning and return home late and tired at nights. On weekends, rather than make it up to them by being home, these men leave home early to attend wedding Fatihas, turbanings and political meetings. About the only time they relax and pay attention to their wives is on those restricted weekends, because they have no choice but to remain at home. And with everyone sleeping a bit late, the children, the house-helps and the occasional visiting relative, madam might get some attention. So a few thousand babies could be the result.’ Umma declared mischievously.
She might be right that such weekends come with some romantic dividends for neglected wives, but the intended result of the exercise is obviously never achieved. Almost all over the nation where it is in practice, sanitation days are observed only in the breach. Rubbish heaps and blocked drainages remain where they are, like cherished castles. My friend’s daughter Safiya, a typical ABU (Abuja brought up) recently had a shocking experience when she visited her North-western home town.
While being driven down a road whose two sides were packed full with rubbish heaps, Safiya’s only wish was to reach the end of that road. But to her utmost shock she reached a part of it where food vendors were selling food and their customers were sitting there to eat, totally oblivious to the dirt around them. ’You need to see Aunty’ Safiya said to me in disgust, ‘the men were seated on their benches facing that dirt and stench and eating.’ Obviously these people have reached a point in their lives where they consider living in dirt not an aberration but a normal thing.  This is unfortunate.
One thing that always strikes me whenever I travel outside Nigeria is how other people manage to keep their surroundings clean. And I am not talking about advanced countries, no, I’m referring to those within Africa, in the Third World, who still manage to be cleaner than us. I agree with Shakespeare, that the fault ‘is not in our stars, but in us, that we are underlings.’ In other words we are not tolerating the dirt and filth around us because we are inherently dirt-friendly rather because we are too lazy or complacent to do all it takes to achieve environmental hygiene.
I have often said here that our leaders are some of the most widely-travelled in the world yet they hardly think of adopting the clean environment strategies they see around. The few who do, abandon them in no time, such that our dirty environment returns to its former state sooner than later. Sometimes I pass by big billboards of governors or local council chairmen seated atop such rubbish heaps and wonder just how they feel seeing their ‘honourable faces’ decorating such unsightly dirt. Don’t they feel their ‘excellent selves’ faces have been defiled? Be that as it may, its high-time they find ways of enforcing environmental sanitation so that the monthly exercise can be meaningful.
It is no longer enough to force us to remain at home when no sanitation exercise is taking place anywhere to justify the restricted movement. Local council chairmen must be saddled with the responsibility of ensuring that these exercises are observed every month through mobilizing both themselves and their councilors to go round every ward and street in their area and insist that residents must come out to clean their surroundings and properly dispose of their refuse. Like me, millions of Nigerians often wonder what local councils do apart from their monthly Federal allocation sharing session. Overseeing the sanitation exercise will at least give them something concrete to do.
In saner climes, town planning and beautification is the sole preserve of the local council. Quite taken in by the cleanliness and beautiful flower-beds at the ancient city of Istanbul, I was forced to ask whose job it was to oversee the cleaning and decoration when I visited there. Our host told me that it was the job of the small mayors. The big mayor of Istanbul is the governor, then the small mayors, equivalent to our council chairmen, oversee the districts that make up the historical city. These are the ones who keep the Big Mayor from feeling ashamed to take his visitors anywhere within Istanbul. We can do the same here.       
 On their part our state governors must provide the necessary funding needed to provide big street-side refuse bins, refuse disposal trucks and a central rubbish dump away from town where all the refuse can be disposed of and burnt. To emphasise the importance of this environmental cleanliness, they should organize inspection exercises for the various local governments, after every environmental sanitation exercise so that the cleanest of them will be rewarded with a prize and much publicity. I recall that one military governor of Kano state (was it Colonel Idris Garba?) had instituted such an inspection and rewarding exercise in the days of the military. Municipal councils in the state actually competed to win that prize. This can be re-introduced nationally. Then the states should enact a series of environmental offences and their penalties in order to punish defaulters.
Above all, state governments must do all in their power to provide pipe-borne water to their people. Not much can be attained by way of cleanliness if water shortage is the biggest problem. Then they must engage in serious public enlightenment on the dangers of living in dirty surroundings. The one that is featured regularly on NTA network service is a very good one but since few people have the ‘Nepa’ or ‘have passed their neighbours’ enough to be able to see it, billboards and posters must be pasted in strategic areas, in towns and cities, to encourage people to observe personal and environmental hygiene. Radio jingles must be made in every Nigerian language to enable every Nigerian to get the keep-your- environment- clean campaign. They must be made to know that the epidemics that recur every year are mostly a direct result of poor environmental hygiene.  
In decades past, such public enlightenment was effectively undertaken using the mobile film-show strategy. I don’t know how effective that will be in today’s Nigeria. But whatever it takes, governments must find ways of enlightening our people against living in and ‘normalizing’ dirt. The first step is to enforce the monthly sanitation exercise by making sure that the exercise is observed and not just tolerated, as an unnecessary waste of three hours. The few thousand babies my friend Umma imagines are added into the Nigerian population, every sanitation day, may no longer be conceived if their fathers are out there keeping their surroundings clean, but at least the world will be made much cleaner and safer for those of us already here.