Managing air quality in Nigerian cities

With the climate change phenomenon taking over the whole globe, cold periods have alternated with warm periods, with the changes happening at a much faster and devastating rate in recent years. Available statistics indicate that humanity may have recorded its warmest moments in the 1980s and 1990s owing to the acceleration in technology-driven activities. Carbon […]

With the climate change phenomenon taking over the whole globe, cold periods have alternated with warm periods, with the changes happening at a much faster and devastating rate in recent years. Available statistics indicate that humanity may have recorded its warmest moments in the 1980s and 1990s owing to the acceleration in technology-driven activities. Carbon dioxide, popularly referred to as CO2, for instance, is the part of the mixture of gases in the atmosphere called greenhouse gases, usually famous for trapping heat. Such greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere from nature every day. Mrs Halima Alao, former Nigerian Minister of Environment, who commented on this recently. She noted that the gas were mostly generated by the burning of fossil fuels to run vehicles, factories, and other industrial processes.

Such gases have shifted the atmosphere’s natural balance. “Climate Change is already affecting and will continue to affect the whole world’s land, water, and air. “It will also affect health, jobs, economies, culture and communities of the people living on our planet,’’ she said. For most analysts of the environment, one sector largely blamed for the climate change problem is transportation.

While noting that transportation is key to the economy in both the urban and rural areas, they have always pointed out that both stationary and mobile vehicles constitute a major problem to a clean environment. One such analyst is Mr Sylvestre Usman, a university lecturer. “More than 90 per cent of transportation in Nigeria is done via the roads and that means that all kinds of vehicles will continue to ply the roads,’’ he said. According to him, each vehicle on the Nigerian roads is a potential source of air pollution. “The situation is especially bad in the cities as vehicles emit all kinds of effluents into the air, hurting the atmosphere,’’ he said. Other causes of air pollution in Nigeria, Usman said, include noise and smokes from machines used by industries, as well as the burning of biomass for cooking.

The Unite Nations (UN) recently confirmed that about half of the world populations live in cities. In effect, the quantity of the fumes released into the air has continued to increase. The world body also said recently that “more than 800,000 people die prematurely each year from urban air pollution’’. It is perhaps because of such frightening statistics that many countries have focused on the transportation sector in an effort to reduce harmful carbons released into the sky.

Reports indicate that many countries now focus on new vehicle technologies that would consume very little fuel, while those that should consume much fuel, would use alternative cleaner fuels. In the United States, for instance, there is an emission control technology that has greatly improved the environment in recent years.

Essentially, the technology ensures a close relationship between the age of the engine and the exhaust mechanism, so as to determine the kind of emissions to be produced. The technology is based on the fact that fleets with predominantly older vehicles produce significantly higher emissions than those with newer automobiles.

In developing nations, deliberate efforts have also been made by some authorities to encourage the maintenance of car engines to minimise the emission of offensive carbons into the air, while some governments have also legislated against the importation or use of cars considered old. Speaking on the issue recently, former Industry Minister Fidelis Tapgun, said that Nigeria has “about four million vehicles and three million motorcycles plying the roads. “That number may not be much, but the vehicles concentrate on major urban centres, with about 30 per cent in Lagos alone’’. He said the situation was particularly harmful where vehicles spend hours in traffic jams. Dr Taiwo Kayode, the Director, Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority, said the pollution on the roads get worse everyday because the vehicles plying the roads were poorly maintained. Kayode noted that demands on emission control, as well as low vibration and noise levels, have made the design of automobile exhaust systems a much more complex task over the last few decades.

According to him, it is important for the engine of a vehicle to be in very good condition to ensure that the pollutants emitted to the environment is limited. He said that the large quantity of air pollution in Lagos has increased medical costs, with more money spent by individuals and corporate organisations on medicines and hospital visits. Kayode’s fears received more currency recently when some researchers  from the Nigeria Institute of Medical Research (NIMR)Yaba,  reported that there was a high level of carbon monoxide in the blood  stream of most Nigeria, both smokers and non-smokers.

To curtail this, Mr Ahmed Alfa, Deputy Director, Pollution Control, Ministry of Environment, announced recently that the Federal Government had purchased three units of vehicular emission assessment equipment. The equipment, which cost N9 million, would help in assessing the level of carbon released from vehicles. They (equipment) are important because they will help in developing regulations for vehicular emission in Nigeria.

“They will also help us to know the quantity of carbon that each car  is emitting on our roads and help our quest to develop a standard  regulation that will control the emission in the country, so as to boost public health and tackle global warming.’’

Alfa said that government would soon develop a standard and come out with a regulation that would ensure that Nigeria would have only cleaner vehicles on the highways. According to him, the process will be achieved during the annual road-worthiness exercise, during which the carbon emission from each vehicle will be tested. “When we begin such tests, any vehicle that does not meet the required standard will be taken off the road or the owner advised to put it in good shape,” Alfa said.  He regretted that in the past, air quality was not given any consideration until climate change became a burning issue.  To make for effective use of the anti-emission equipment, he said that 35 personnel from the Ministry of Environment and the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) have been trained at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.

(NANFeatures)