Monthly national and states sanitation
exercises, one of the relics of the infamous Buhari/Idiagbon military
administration in Nigeria 1983-85 has continued to hang as an albatross over
our necks regardless of the fact that it was a failure from inception. It is the product of the Machiavellian
thinking that attempted to make people believe that the only way to make
Nigerians behave well is when you stamp your booth on their neck with gun and
koboko. Talk about the gun and koboko
mentality and leadership which the military instituted in Nigeria and worked
hard to infuse same in our mentality which is the major bane of Nigeria today.
None of our leaders have bothered
to teach us character and nationalism.
All they have done is to sit or stand over us with gun and koboko and
riding a roughshod over us.
Some State Governors in our typical
crowd mentality quickly added their own monthly environmental sanitation
exercises which only increased our traumas.
After three decades, the only people
who benefit from the monthly sanitation exercise in Nigeria are touts and the dubious
revenue contractors who pay money in advance to equally dubious government
officials and then hire Policemen and recently Civil Defence personnel to
harass, attack, arrest, detain and extort money from the ignorant among us.
The question that some people would
ask is ‘how come you claim that the policy is wrong when it has lasted for such
a long time, a whopping three decades”?
This is a valid question, especially as only few laws are ever
remembered in Nigeria immediately after they are made. How come this got stuck
with our people? The answer is ‘because
some dubious officials of local and state governments are making a lot of money
out of Nigerians through extortion, bribes illegal fines and other charges.
The very fact that the programme
has lasted for so long a time is the very reason why it should be immediately
abolished without further delay.
On a typical national or state
sanitation day in Nigeria is a day when touts, robbers and dubious contractors
reign supreme and make a lot of money from bribes, robberies and fines, all
obtained from the people under duress.
The very fact that they make so much money on this day to sustain the
barbarism they visit on Nigerians is evidence that the exercise has failed to
make Nigerians conscious of the need to keep their environment clean. The reason for instituting the exercise was
ostensibly “to instill ‘by force of arm and koboko’ the consciousness to keep
our environment clean”. Thirty years
down the line, more and more people are caught deliberating flouting the order
to stay at home and clean up their environment.
On a typical sanitation exercise
day in Lagos, usually the last Saturday of each month, you have heavy traffic
jam and serious road blocks as early as 4:00am.
The reason is that people are rushing to beat the 7:00am start off time
of the exercise during which vehicular movement is restricted except for those
on essential services.
People traveling long distances
start very early in the morning and driving as close as possible to their
destination and then park their vehicles somewhere on the road where the 7:00am
startup time met them. By leaving their
homes too early in the day, they expose themselves to criminality and harm and
loss of their hard earned money and property.
Those who remained at home just sit
by to loll, sleep longer than necessary and waste a whole of three-hour block
when so much would been accomplished.
The worsening environmental
situation of our cities is evidence that the national sanitation exercise is
not working. The fact that after thirty years of the law and its forceful
implementation, people are still being caught, harassed, maltreated, beaten up,
temporarily imprisoned, and robbed of their money by officials using guns
purchased by tax payers money is evidence that the sanitation exercise is not
working, will not work and should, therefore, be abolished.
Abia state observes the state and national
sanitation exercises on the first and last Saturdays of each month. In spite of the double dose of the wickedness
of the so-called environmental sanitation exercises observed in Abia State, the
state is still the dirtiest places in the whole wide world with heaps of refuse
covering dual carriageways in the middle of the city of Aba.
This is to call on both the
Nigerian and state governments to immediately and as a matter of urgent
national concern abolish the national and state sanitation exercises wherever
they are observed in Nigeria.
It is heartwarming to know that the
national sanitation exercise does not hold in Akwa Ibom State and Uyo, the
capital city of Akwa Ibom State, is cleaner than Abuja Federal Capital
Territory of Nigeria.
SAVE OUR SOULS.
