Flooded communities in Ogun were not

The Ogun State Commissioner for Environment, Ola Oresanya.

The Ogun State government has been making efforts to address the perennial flooding ravaging parts of the state. The Commissioner for Environment, Mr. Ola Oresanya, who spoke to select journalists in Abeokuta, gave insight on the issue.  He also spoke on the environmental pollution caused by cement factories in the state, the challenge of waste management and advantages of the CNG initiative, which the state has fully keyed into, among other issues. GBENGA AKINFENWA was there. Excerpts:

The issue of air pollution, especially effluents from cement factories, has become a recurring decimal in the state. At a time, host communities of the Lafarge WAPCO factory, Ewekoro, complained bitterly on how activities of the company have impacted their farmlands. What’s the state doing to put a permanent end to this menace?
The cement industry happens to be one of the industries with the highest level of footage when it comes to carbon emission. In Nigeria, we have the highest number of cement industries in Ogun State.  Aside from the cement industries, we have the highest non-oil extractive industries in Nigeria, talking about mining, limestone, and other minerals.
 
Three-quarters of the state is underlain by limestone; that’s the appetite you have for mining. Lafarge WAPCO has two factories – Sagamu and Ewekoro. We have other industries – BUA and Dangote cements. Dangote has the biggest factory here at Ibese, and BUA is along the way. We have international cements also in the state.
 
Now, for the Ewekoroarea, what we did was to take the stack records. We got consultants of international repute to give us what is coming up from the stack. What we got in Ewekoro was within permissible limits; where Ewekoro had a problem was on their mining site. It was the emission from their mining site. They were not able to precipitate the dust from their mining site, not from the stack.
 
Where they had a stack problem was at the Sagamu factory, and we shut it down. Up till today, the Sagamu factory is not working, because we shut it down two years ago. And we told them that until they complete the installation of their centrifuge precipitator, which is a pollution abatement device, both for their waste scrubbers and for dry scrubbers, they will not open that factory.
 
At the Ewekoro factory, they have the scrubber; they have the precipitator there. So, what is coming from their stack is not what is causing any pollution there; the pollution is coming from the mine. That probably would have disrupted farming activities.
 
But while we did the investigation further, we found out that the land where those people are farming actually belongs to Lafarge. But because they were not there to mine for years, people started using this land as farmland.
 
When we asked the communities to bring their title hold on this farmland, they could not bring any but Lafarge brought theirs. So we were able to resolve that community issue. I think it was more of a community disagreement.
 
What happened at Ibese was worse than what is going on at Ewekoro; but we were able to intervene there. I was there, likewise the Minister of the Environment, and we told them what to do to avoid any kind of backslide. So, we are working seriously with these cement industries.
 
One other thing to support the cement industry in their decarbonisation programme is by using refuse in the state, because Ogun State is holding firmly on decarbonising these industries, because they are adding so much to the national footage.
 
We turn refuse to what we call the refuse-derived fuel. They are going to use it as a main component of their energy transition programme to reduce the fossil fuel quantity they are using in their plants. And they are working with us seriously. We are working with McKenzie on this. We are working with what we call Manufacture Africa, which is a British government-owned SPV that is working with us in Ogun.

We are the only state in Nigeria working with Manufacture Africa. And we have McKenzie, which is a global organisation. We have the National Sovereign Fund and several conglomerates working with us on decarbonising these cement industries using the refuse, not just from Ogun State alone, but from other contiguous states.
 
We are working seriously in that direction. And we are pitching on this at the Climate Change Summit (COP), coming up in Azerbaijan. On the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, especially from Mowe-Ibafo axis to Kara Cattle Market, including some border communities, the issue of open defecation has become a norm. How’s the state nipping this in the bud?
 
When we are talking about open defecation, there are several things to make people indulge in that – lack of infrastructure for toilets, social values or lack of consequences for that kind of misbehaviour. This is because some people, even with the toilet beside them, prefer to go to do the thing out there. So, whatever we are doing, we are conscious of what warranted that.
 
For Kara, it’s not just lack of infrastructure; it’s about social values, because the people that indulge in that area, most of them have been displaced. Inside Kara, we have public toilets, but rather than go there, they will still want to indulge in that open-air thing where they will smoke and tell you that’s the way they enjoy their life.
 
To some people, it is a psychological issue. For most of the people that we have arrested there, when you tell them this is a toilet, why can’t you go there, they will tell you they get a kind of feeling when it’s in the open like that and it’s having a fag. So, it’s social psychology. And to change a kind of habit, we need to have a kind of  reprimand, and that’s exactly what we are doing.
 
The menace has reduced seriously in that area because we now have people policing the area 24/7. So, when you are caught doing it, you go through the experience of community service, cleaning what others probably would have done and that probably is a deterrent right now.
 
Two, what about infrastructure for the people who go there to trade? Now, we populated the area with another six new public toilets; go there and you will see the yellow roofs. I can count six from Berger end towards the Tribune office area.
 
For policing, yes, to change that social value, we have to do policing. You would have seen people with green vests monitoring up and down in the area. So, it’s something we cannot condone. The next thing we are putting out are signages so that at least they will see it; we will criminalise it with the signage. So, it is not just community service right now; some of them may have to go and serve some terms somewhere. So, we are not going to allow it and we are doing so much to make sure we eradicate it in that area.
 
So, we will not allow the degradation of our environment with such noxious actions. And one of the good news you must hear is that with our strategies of implementing what we call the WASH – Waste Sanitation and Health Programme, we have the first local council in Southwest that was certified open-defecation-free.  What we did there, following the UNICEF protocol, is to make sure that every household must have a functional convenience. And we achieved that; we are making sure that you don’t have any reason whatsoever to go out there to defecate. And we are scaling that up in the state, making sure that we have more public toilets all over the state.
 
And our public toilets in Ogun State are unique. They are not just conventional public toilets; they are unique in the sense that the faeces is used with what we call the bowel reactor. We use it to generate electricity in those toilets. So they are unique in a sense, and that’s our goal.
 
Now, on supporting facilities, we are tightening up our laws to make sure that all restaurants in the state, all petrol stations, if you don’t make your toilet available for people to use, we can seal up the place.

So we are going to make sure that people have numbers to call to report if you are pressed and approach a petrol station to use their toilets and they deny you. If one of the conditions for giving them the licence to operate is that they must have functional toilets for public use, they must make them available for public use. So we will make sure we educate them more, and we will criminalise that. So you don’t have any reason whatsoever to do anything on the road.

Recently, some parts of the state witnessed unprecedented flooding. Places like Isheri resorted to the use of canoe due to the magnitude of the water in the area. Since this is a perennial issue, must there be flooding? And what’s the future plan to forestall this menace? Or should the people relocate?
 
Well, let’s start with your question, must there be flood. I would say yes. What is flood? Flooding is the consequences of overflow of the pathway for a river or drainage channel due to several reasons – most times, high level of precipitation, which is rainfall, or constriction of flow.
 
So, now, what are the natural dimensions to flood? Rainfall. It’s so easy. Let me explain it to you. There’s something we call hydraulic structure, which is your drainage channel, dams and the rest of it. These are hydraulic structures, things that manage flow of water. It’s likened to the sink you have in your toilets.
 
If you pour a bucket of water into that sink, it will take probably five minutes before it drains off. The same sink, if you now pour one drum of water inside it, will it not spill over? That’s flooding. So, if you have developed your drainage channel to take charge of this level of water and you now have a very high precipitation, you have an overflow.
 
The average rainfall pattern in Ogun State, which is a replica of Nigeria, is 20mm monthly. But between the months of June and July, for one month, it can run to almost 400mm. In fact, check this on the meteorological report that was released in February this year.
 
In Ogun State, we are going to have about 396mm, almost 400mm of rain in one month, compared to the average of 20mm, where we have about 26 days of rain. So, can anything contain that? No. But must you allow for the overflow? Yes.
 
And in Ogun State, we have two patterns of seasonal flooding. Due to this kind of rainfall pattern, the flash flood, which comes with the early rains, is inland; it is upland. The heavy flow of rainwater, this rainfall will come within a very short time, and it will run downstream. That is a flash flood.

It can be abrasive, erosive and destructive, on a high-speed flow. And when you look at the topography of Ogun State, we have a hilly part in the northern part, and almost flat terrain in the southern part.
 
So, there’s a heavy runoff, which is a flash flood, and that is the first season of flood we always have in Ogun State. The second season of flood is the river flooding and the coastal flooding, which is always due to release of detained excess water in the early part of the year. And usually, that detained water that is released is necessary, so that we don’t have dams being broken.
 
In October this year, it was reported globally that Lagos Lagoon was going to rise by 1.14 metres. As the normal tidal height day, I mean night height, usually maybe 0.2, 0.3 metres. But on October 18, it went up to 1.14, and from October 25, it started coming down. So, with that kind of lock, when you have water being released and you have a tidal lock, what do you expect in the flood plain? You are going to have water that will stay for a while before it will regress into the Atlantic Ocean.
 
All these areas you talk about, they are flood plains; they are natural plains that God created to reticulate these natural events. You are not supposed to build on them.
 
There’s a rule of engagement that guides if you must build there. Like the Bible says, my people perish for lack of knowledge – knowledge gap within the government
 
A flood plain has its own rules. The rule is that if you look at 100 years of flood height in that area, what is the highest or the prevailing height? For the Isheri area and the rest of it, water can go up to about 1.5 metres.
 
So, if I must build there, I must operate at a higher elevation. My road and my building must be at that level if I must stay there. Go and look at Lekki. Lekki was dredged at about five, six metres by Westminster dredgers in the 1980s. That’s why you can’t build in Lekki. It was swamped. The whole of Victoria Island was swamped, but you have to prepare the land for dwelling, for habitation.
 
Most of these areas you are talking about, we have land speculators that just moved in there without preparing the land for habitation; people build those houses there. Even the government had an estate there so the government was guilty too.

What do we do next? It’s just to manage the headache. So, you asked that question, must there be flooding? There will always be floods. It is part of human natural event; but you must decide to manage the flood so that it does not disturb what you will do. Give water its own way. When you look at Isheri North, it was not prepared for habitation properly. It is unfortunate that a lot of people built houses there – beautiful, lovely estates, in that area, but without proper understanding.

The Omu and Olokomeji Forest Reserves are being encroached. The development is actually affecting biodiversity. You might say it’s a cultural issue, but it falls under biodiversity. Don’t you see this as a threat to biodiversity in the state?
 
Well, biodiversity issues have got to do with what your values are and those values will be well entrenched in your conservation policy. It’s a conservation issue. And you can conserve for tourism purposes.You can conserve for human development purposes. You can conserve for historical reasons or for agricultural reasons because this biodiversity has its own input in agricultural development and the forestry.
 
Now, for these two main forest reserves, the Olokomeji and the Omu reserves, if you look at the peculiarities, in Olokomeji, the biodiversity loss is due more to agricultural encroachment. You have a lot of residents, traditional people who need their land for cultivation.So they started disturbing the natural habitats, clearing the trees, so that they can do a lot of agriculture.
 
Now, what are we doing about it? We are working with UNICEF and UNEP to give alternative means of livelihood for the people because they have to survive.So, instead of cutting off the trees, disrupting the biodiversity, we have to create an alternative job for them. Now, for Omu, there is a UNICEF centre there. That’s the only one in Nigeria recognised.
 
Omu’s major problem is not people wanting to cultivate but also tree loggers. It’s one of the major problems for Omu – the loggers. And that conspiracy is huge. It’s not just Ogun or Nigeria; it’s a global conspiracy.
 
What the Ministry of Forestry is doing about that is to increase enforcement and to make sure that we stop the exportation of all these woods out of Nigeria, which is one.
 
Two, we make sure that we incentivise the afforestation programme. So for Omu, the main thing is the main afforestation. Now, restoration of biodiversity will not be easy. It will take years. Those elephants have been displaced; it’s causing problems. They are struggling to come back to their natural habitation. The communities are trying to push them away. And we know further that people are now taking the tusk of the elephants. So, it’s a security issue.

We are working with a lot of other conservation agencies to make sure that these sites are well protected and we don’t lose this key component of the biodiversity, the ecosystem, the eco-diversity that we have in Ogun State, which is very rich. There are hardly many states you see in Nigeria that have such high industries, high agro-based issues, and even rich conservation sites. Ogun State is so blessed. And we have two main sorts of inland natural freshwaters, the Osun River, the OgunRiver, traversing the state. It’s almost the Garden of Eden of Nigeria.

Can you tell us what the state is losing to this encroachment?
I’m not very good at that. Maybe the Ministry of Forestry can give us the naira and kobo. I don’t know how much they sell. I’m only concerned with the environmental impact and actually, the entomology component of it; because entomology will tell you that we are losing so much of the insects that are clearly helping in this pollination and growing those trees.

What’s the state government’s approach to waste management? What we have taking place everywhere is waste disposal, not waste management. How is the state approaching this?
  There is a difference between waste disposal and waste management. Waste management is about closing the loop in the value chain. Waste generation, that’s the source – collection, transportation and we will come to waste processing, and from disposal to processing, and then back to source. So, we are talking about circular economy in Nigeria; Ogun State happens to be the headquarters of circular economy in Nigeria. We have the highest number of industries. We have the highest number of recycling companies in Nigeria.
 
We recycle about 1,250 metric tonnes of plastics daily in the state between four factories. We have over 1,500 metric tonnes of ferrous and non-ferrous metals daily; over 1,000 tonnes of papers recycled daily. We have nine companies in Nigeria doing recycling of batteries; eight of them are here, the ninth one is not even functioning. Let me just say that virtually all battery companies are here in Ogun State. With those facts, I can tell you that Ogun State is the headquarters of circular economy in Nigeria.
 
We generate about 3,500 metric tonnes of waste on a daily basis; it is not enough for us to even service the demand for the recyclables we have in the state. That’s the downstream activities, because it is only what you have collected efficiently that you can recycle effectively.
 
Now, upstream what do we do from source to those recycling centres? Our model is to bring in the private sector; waste management is a bankable process. We are focused on the market; the market source is the source of generation. We are people who are able to pay adequately and in areas where they cannot pay, the government bridges the gap.
 
We made it in such a way that the private sector is collecting for profit and that’s the motivation; that’s the incentive. You don’t want to lose a job you are making profit from. So, we bridge the gap to make sure that collection of waste is profitable and that’s the area we are bridging, that the state government has been supporting very well.

We have a lot of investors, investing their own money; so there is a social component of it and there is a business component of it. We certify it into industrial-commercial waste, hazardous and chemical waste, residential waste and all of that. These are certified for different cadres of collectors.  And we have an institution that is focused on that – the Ogun Waste Management Authority (OGWAMA), headed by a special adviser to the governor; which was created by this administration of Governor Dapo Abiodun.

There are challenges with waste disposal in some local councils like Ado-Odo/Ota, Ifo and others, where refuse is disposed indiscriminately on road medians. Can you tell us the synergy between the state and the councils on this?
  You would have seen that there is a kind of synergy between infrastructure and waste management. In all these mentioned areas, there are infrastructure gaps, which have affected the waste management strategy in those areas. Even the private sector guys would not want their vehicles to break into two; many of them avoid those areas and that is why we have not been efficient in those places.
 
But the government is deploying so much infrastructure development there. There is nowhere in the world where waste management can be efficient without infrastructure development. So, it comes hand in hand and very soon you will see the changes in these areas because once the roads are made, the next thing is to see them in action.

Ogun State has keyed into the Presidential CNG initiative; vehicles have been imported and this administration has a lifespan. How sustainable is this initiative?
  Whatever programme you do in the public sector, to make it sustainable, you start with an enduring policy, so that you can develop your legal instrument from there. It is all about entrenching your intentions and your policies with the legal instruments.
 
Two, your framework should consider three major things –the social benefit of whatever you are doing, people must key into it; people must have ownership. If people cannot relate with the benefit of your programme, forget it. You can only force it within the lifespan of your regime, but if the people have ownership of your programme, it goes beyond just your tenure; it will be part of the things people will demand from any government coming in. So, there is the social component, which must be well entrenched and that means you must engage with the people. They must have a shared vision and you must hold the vision.
 
Two, it must add value to the environment. If it’s not adding value, why will anybody want to embrace it? So, if it’s adding value to the environment, nobody can stop it because the environment is your natural habitat.
 
And lastly, which is the most important, it must be economically viable. You must have a business model that will make sure that there is a reward system that must come from doing well. Somebody must be picking up the bill and there must be a reward. If there is no reward system that will take the private sector to invest in it then forget it. If you are able to subject your policies and guidelines or your programmes into those two components of sustainability, it is going to be enduring. So, you must check your checklist, your programme. Is it saving cost? Yes, instead of buying N100, 000 fuel to travel a hundred kilometres, I am using N20, 000 for a hundred kilometres. That’s economics; it is just there.

Now, the social value, is it making life more meaningful for me? Yes, because they are now bringing food from farm to table with the CNG-powered trucks, reducing food costs. Is it adding value to my life? So, socially, I will key into it.
 
Now, lastly, is it reducing carbon emission in our state? Yes. The presidential initiative on CNG vehicles is superb, if only we can implement it within that framework of sustainability. 
 

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