Nigeria could do more to protect the environment  

Reports that about 90 per cent of the plastic waste generated in Nigeria is not recycled and that our country ranks ninth globally among countries with the highest contribution to plastic pollution should concern relevant authorities. According to experts, the process of manufacturing plastics and its disposal through burning/incineration is harmful to workers and that it does not decompose makes farming cumbersome and kills livestock. Also, studies show that single-use plastics are harmful to the environment and have suggested that manufacturers of plastics can switch to reusable products because single-use plastics’ waste can take up to a thousand years to decompose in dumpsites. 

Scientists have raised global concern that plastics pose unimaginable danger to humanity and may reach crisis levels unless deliberate actions are taken to reverse the trend. The warning is particularly important for Nigeria since it is believed that plastic bags and bottles that are used daily can take hundreds of years to decompose. Yet, because single-use plastics are light, strong, can be shaped easily and cheap to produce, they litter the entire national landscape today. And as hazardous as that is for the future of our country, the government is not paying attention.  

The Nigerian Conservation Foundation (NCF) believes the disposal of plastic waste needs to be handled with urgency and that everyone has a critical role to play in mitigating the issue at the household, national, regional, and global levels. Plastics, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), may constitute more of foreign materials in the sea than marine mammals by year 2050, and this would eventually lead to the destruction of sea life, and adversely alter the ecosystem and human race. 

   With worldwide awareness and action for the protection of the environment, there is an urgent need for government at all levels in the country to trigger actions that would control the production and use of plastics that are not reusable or cannot decompose. Nigeria’s environment is indeed polluted by all manner of plastics–from the straw for sipping beverages to those used for packaging and storage. The nagging question that keeps cropping up is, what can be done about the menace that neither the society nor the authorities seem to be paying attention to?  

Everybody in either a household or office or neighbourhood in the country has various types of plastics that are not recycleable/reusable and which at end-of-life are littered on the streets, caught in fences and trees, dumped in drains, rivers and lagoons, the ocean, and all manner of places where they cannot decompose. This is where the problem lies. The federal government, we understand, only made a feeble attempt to ‘mark’ the World Environment Day at the Presidential Villa in Abuja but not even a whisper of what was discussed got out of the four walls of the room where the meeting took place. Naturally, no event took place in all the offices of the Federal Ministry of Environment in the states for undisclosed reasons.  

The federal government needs to take concrete actions to protect the environment and rid it of plastics as some African countries have done by placing a ban on plastic bags, which are the most used form of plastics. Some of the African countries that have banned plastic bags include Benin Republic, Cameroon, Chad, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Morocco, Mozambique, Malawi, Niger, Rwanda, Madagascar, Senegal, Gabon, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Tanzania, Tunisia, and Kenya while Botswana and South Africa introduced high levies on plastic bags. This has led to many retailers charging a fee on plastic bags and consequently a reduction in its use in both countries.  

Nigeria should also decide on plastic pollution in the overall interest of our people and future generations.