Why we need sanitation brigade

Less number of the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, has appreciated the importance of ensuring that their neighbourhoods are, as a rule, kept clean on a daily basis.Visit some of such states and you easily notice how the dutiful cleaning of the streets, residential neighbourhoods and industrial parks has added value to […]

Less number of the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, has appreciated the importance of ensuring that their neighbourhoods are, as a rule, kept clean on a daily basis.
Visit some of such states and you easily notice how the dutiful cleaning of the streets, residential neighbourhoods and industrial parks has added value to the health of the citizens compared with other places where filth and waste or dump-sites compete with public infrastructure and constrained individual health system.
Even though state ministries of environment may have functions that border on this, the need for a specialised agency such as sanitation brigade with statutory powers has now become imperative.
No more should state governments pay lip service to this as the health of the people need not be compromised any longer.
In many states, heaps of refuse are often the welcome sights, so that pests, flies and other insects which are carriers of diseases frequently transmit the dangerous and innumerable viruses into humans thereby compounding the already worst situation.
Since Nigeria is a country of enterprising and hard working people who engage in assorted businesses to boost local and national economies, including running roadside restaurants, drinking parlours and commercial public toilets side by side, the danger that the neighbourhood would be easily polluted, messed up and littered cannot be over-emphasised.
As a people, frequently we are given to street or over-night parties where not only noise would pollute the environment but left-overs of foods, drinks and their containers as well as human wastes would be allowed to litter everywhere.
Most often, the regular agencies whose remote or additional function is to clean these dirts up later hardly respond. What then would be the aftermath of such a situation? The lack of a Sanitation Brigade as in other civilised climes has created a yawning gap and compounded the situation.