Nigeria: Issue of Waste Management, A Very basic Environmental Problem Still Not Being Handled Adequately–Environmentalist

Rev. Nnimmo Bassey

From Dianabasi Effiong

Comrade Nnimmo Bassey, Director, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), who is also a renowned environmentalist, met with a group of about 70 young people at a training programme which underscored the importance of the Youth Roundtable on Climate Action to unlock youth innovativeness in Nigeria’s climate action.
He also spoke with members of the media at the end of the exercise tagged “Youth Climate Incubation Hub’’ in Port Harcourt with participants drawn from Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Edo and Rivers States.
Our Correspondent, who was at the Regional Youth Climate Incubation Hub for South-South Zone, serves details of the interview.
Comrade, How Did It Go?
The climate hub for the South-South youths went excellently well. Because we were worried about how open the youths will be with the ideas to fight climate change, how really they will be to express themselves in the mist of their colleagues.
But as it is they all came well prepared, they came with their ideas and then they were quite open to new ideas. At the end of the day we are able to harmonise the ideas and pick up the best collection of ideas that we can take to the national level and from there to the global level.
The issue of waste management which is a very basic environmental problem is still not being handled adequately. There is a lot room for improvement and not surprisingly many of the recommendations from the youths from the South-South had to do with the waste management, especially about how to recycle waste into useful products, also how to turn organic waste and vegetative waste into useful energy.
The issue of plastic waste management featured prominently and so we saw the connection being drawn between flooding and waste disposal, flooding and continuous use of single use plastics, flooding, polluting and water pollution.
They also recommended how this can be handled. I think this was very useful in terms of bringing new ideas as well as reiterating old existing ideas.
Global Community and climate Change
If I were to address the global climate change leaders, I will say, ’Watch out Nigerian youths are coming’, they are ready for climate action, they won’t accept inaction anymore, they want our leaders to be proactive and they want our leaders to listen to the young people the future is theirs and they have the solution. So, is better to look towards the youths.
Nigerian Government
To the Nigerian government, this workshop and the series of hub that will come up in the country is being held by the invitation of the Ministry of Environments, so clearly the federal ministry of environment knows that good ideas would come from the youths and so they are facilitating the holding of this hub.
It is one thing to hold the hub and another thing to take the solutions into practice and so I urge the Nigerian government that the youths are consciously getting together to bring up these ideas, building solidarity among themselves and learning from one another. When the ideas get to your desk please put them into practice, implement them and don’t put them into the shelve.
Role of Media
The media has a very primary duty in this whole exercise because throughout the days we met here with the youths what keep coming were about environmental literacy, advocacy, explaining the problem and taking the solution to the people.
The media is going to play a central role because what people cannot hear in their family or in the schools they learn in the public space which is where the media is.
Tell Us About Yourself
I have invested much more energy in climate justice activism in case of regenerating knowledge, denouncing false solutions and even in the meeting with the youths we had to guide them with anything that looks like solution but appears to compound the problem.
We have managed to train some young people to be ready to take up the space.