SANITATION AND HEALTH INDICES IN LAGOS: ARE WE HUMANS OR PIGS?

Imototo ile imototo ara imoto lole segun arun gbo gbo

This Yoruba rhyme is one of the popular folks used in the olden days as a reminder of the connection between good sanitation and elimination of diseases. This old song clearly shows the present situation in Lagos. Now, we are faced with Gastroenteritis, an ailment that is mostly related to poor and unhygienic environment. How did we get to this in Lagos? 

From the highly rated Banana Island and Lekki to the middle-income level areas like Egbeda to Lagos Island, Lagos is becoming a slum and this is affecting our general wellbeing. You may count yourself wealthy and feel that staying in your high-income area exonerates you from the health paradigm of sanitation, you must be joking? The Ebola incident started off in a well-established hospital and thank God for an “angel”. We would be saying a different story by now. 

For any social and economic development, adequate sanitation in conjunction with good hygiene and safe water are essential to good health. Sanitation is the cornerstone of public health. Without contradiction, lack of community integration and family orientation has contributed to the poor hygiene and sanitation status of most communities. In the olden days, people take time to clean their shops and market places before displaying goods for sale. People take hygiene and good sanitation as a key point for communication, trade and lifestyles.

 Today, go around many communities in Lagos, you will see a well-dressed man/woman buying food or eating in a "bukka" that is close to a littered and dirty drain.

According to Robert Stock in his publication: “Environmental sanitation in Nigeria: Colonial and contemporary", he wrote” In 1985, during the peak of Buhari Administration, environmental sanitation was chosen as the fifth theme of the War Against Indiscipline. Frenzied sanitary activity ensued in all State capitals. State sanitation taskforces were organised, government offices and businesses were directed to close on designated clean-up days and activities of mobile sanitation courts established to prosecute backsliders intensified. During the month of August 1985, many permanent piles of rubbish disappeared and drains which had been clogged for years were opened. Most of these works were accompanied by community self-help groups aided by worker from offices and factories. 

Now, the reverse is the case. Community efforts towards sanitation had been relegated to the background. People encourage each other to dump waste into water course when it rains. Also, when an individual is carrying out act that negates the general wellbeing of all we often see other citizen encouraging them saying what is government doing about it. In the past ten years, cholera and other sanitation related diseases have become inevitable in Nigeria and Lagos is not excluded from it. From an incident in a highly rated school to cases related to the selling of water polluted infected “Igbo Abacha”, our poor sanitation habits continue to contribute to the high rate of sanitation related diseases.  

According to an unpublished survey carried out by the Centre for Environmental Research and Information, social and moral decadency contributes high percentage to the sanitation problem in Lagos State. The older generation believes that lack of moral and social integration from homes play a major role to the dirty environment in major communities in Lagos. An elderly man in his late 70’s asked “people living in Lagos now, are they human or pigs?

Clearly, all indication from different parts of Lagos show most residents are living a pig-related life style. They will dress up nicely, but their environment contradicts their mode of dressing. Now that we have a medical emergency in our hand, we have to go back to the root. Cleanliness is next to Godliness. The general well-being of our environment cannot be the sole responsibility of government, from individual to families, community members to churches and mosques, the gospel of environmental sanitation must be our next project. What is the good in having a big church and the roads to them are dirty and filthy with wastes and other disposable materials?

Let us clean our homes, streets and communities. "Opopo Macca mororo…., eyan lo ngba".