02-06-2020, 03:07 PM
Quote:At the entrance of Ngwa Road Market in the heart of Aba in Abia State, an unperturbed Chika Mba sat gently in the midst of broken bottles, used plastic, dirty nylons, and rags.
As the stench of waste and rubbish engulfed the atmosphere, Chika, a 34-year-old trader, moved around to call on passers-by for patronage. Beside him stood other traders and customers, all haggling prices among themselves. If they found the offensive smell oozing out of their surrounding unpalatable, they did not show it in their countenances. As seconds turned into minutes and hours, rather slowly, Chika and other customers and traders alike laughed, ate, drank and haggled prices of different clothing materials amidst the offensive odour. He would soon dance around the dirt with reckless abandon, to the delight of passers-by and fellow traders.
“There is nothing we can do when there is no proper waste disposal system in place,” Mr Mba told PREMIUM TIMES in an interview, his words spoken with a tinge of deliberate nonchalance.
“The point is that if government fails to carry out its responsibility, there is little ordinary people can do,” he said. “We tried using private waste disposal people but the thing didn’t work out.”
Aba is one of the most commercially vibrant cities in Eastern Nigeria. Residents of the city are renowned for their enterprising spirit and commercial endeavors, making the city one of Nigeria’s foremost commercial hubs. Due to the influx of traders and buyers into the city, Aba is surrounded by numerous markets, among which Ngwa Road Market is prominent.
Located in Aba South Local Government Area of Abia State, the market is popular among residents as the go-to point for buyers of clothing materials, shoes, and other accessories.
With significant commercial activities come heavy waste in markets across the city, including Ngwa Market. However, due to poor disposal system, waste and rubbish used by traders and commuters in the market are dumped indiscriminately around. Over the years, the waste has become a permanent feature of the market and the larger Aba metropolis, exposing traders and passers-by to probable epidemic and other environmental hazards.
“People have stayed in this environment for so long that we do not care about any health hazard any longer,” Mr Mba said, his hands widely spread out in helpless resignation. “We really care less about those things now. Survival is first and most important.”
The filth surrounding Mr Mba and other market users is, however, not perculiar to Ngwa Market Road.
PREMIUM TIMES investigations across major parts of Aba revealed that too many strategic roads, markets and streets in the commercial city are littered with rubbish, dirt, and fecal materials. This reporter moved through dirty spots in strategic places including Asa Road, Obohia Road, Ohanku Road, Portharcourt Road, as well as the popular Ariaria Market.
Aba’s Records of Filth, Decay
The commercial city of Aba has always been in the news for its filthy environment. Over a decade ago, a former Nigerian Minister of Urban Development, Halima Alao, described Aba as the dirtiest city in Nigeria. The city earned the unenviable record alongside Ibadan, the Oyo State capital.
Speaking at a workshop in Ibadan in 2008, the minister expressed displeasure over the environmental sanitation status of Aba and Ibadan, believed to be the biggest city in West Africa. The minister said that in spite of government’s efforts, Ibadan and Aba still remained the dirtiest cities in the country.
More than a decade after the minister lamented the condition, very little has changed in terms of filth and waste management in the commercial city.
In 2013, an environmental right organization based in Aba, Foundation for Environmental Rights, Advocacy & Development (FENRAD) also described the commercial nerve city of Abia State as the dirtiest city across the country. The organization decried the level of refuse dump littered in the major street in Aba after assessing strategic points like Ngwa Road, Asa road by St. Micheals, Ogbor hill, Jubilee and Hospital Roads, among others. It noted that in most areas, the drainage system has been blocked by waste, with the environment oozing with odour from the gutters.
In 2016, data released by the World Health Organization (WHO) revealed that four of the worst cities in the world for air pollution were in Nigeria. The cities named and shamed in the WHO report for high PM10 levels include Onitsha, Kaduna, Umuahia and of course Aba.
Although the Abia State Government has always claimed to be doing its best to address the environmental menace via the Abia State Environmental Protection Agency, the waste armada continues to be a recurring feature of city life in Aba.
As part of measures to tackle the menace, there have been numerous calls on the government to address the waste epidemic in order to avert serious environmental and health disaster in the state. Concerned stakeholders have also called on the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) for intervention.
Abia, alongside Ondo, Edo, Delta, Cross River, Rivers, Akwa-Ibom, Imo and Bayelsa, are the states in which the NDDC is set up to intervene in various developmental aspects of the peoples’ socio-economic life.
The Abia State Government, perhaps overwhelmed by its inability to handle the waste epidemic, has also consistently called on the NDDC for intervention.
For instance, in a press statement posted on the website of the state government in February 2013, the immediate past governor of the state, Theodore Orji, once appealed to the NDDC to help address the waste management crisis in the state. When the Senate committee on the Niger Delta visited Abia state to inspect NDDC projects as part of its oversight function, the former governor asked the committee to site more projects in the state.
Learning, Undergoing Treatment amidst stench
On Port Harcourt Road, by far the most despicable mountain of waste is located at the purported entrance of National High School. The spot, popularly known as Crystal Park Dustbin Junction, is notorious among residents of the state for its heavy stench and fecal waste materials that have blocking the dilapidated and now abandoned Port Harcourt Road.
https://www.premiumtimesng.com/features-and-interviews/375805-despite-thriving-businesses-aba-remains-a-pigsty.html?fbclid=IwAR2dZhoDicxl0KwlwTivQS29zcbl4egYseCSIb1SUxiomqYlthrswPo11Pw