Litter Nation

One of the main problems I’ve been meaning to attend to is the issue of filth in Nigeria. There are only a handful of genuinely clean streets in many major cities and towns. The litter comes in all shapes and sizes but everyone knows the root cause of junk in Nigeria. You and I.

Indeed, we are a litter nation. I happened to be in a bus with a woman that was eating agidi (the really oily one) and it was dripping wet with palm oil. So after her glorious meal she decided to tell the conductor (passenger hustler) that she has to throw the oily mess away through the window. Fortunately, the conductor had the sense not to take it and asked her to keep it. Then this very typical Nigerian woman dropped the wrap on the bus floor and washed her hand on the mess. ??? It’s repulsive, especially if you are the one sitting next to such ogre. Really! You can’t wait till you see a dustbin?

Let’s assume that this woman had taken something cleaner… say she took Gala (industrialized sausage roll) and decided to hand the wrap to our conductor to throw away. The man would have taken it and thrown it out. And there are thousand other buses and cabs doing the same in the same city. The end result is the littered streets you see everywhere.

But there are actually two major types of filth on our streets. There is the impromptu litter and there is the dunghill. The impromptu litter has been expressed vividly in the Gala example. Or in the average pedestrian getting rid of his plastic bag on our roads. But it doesn’t just end there; there is this really backward mentality I’ve noticed many people have for gutters. A gutter is a path created for water to run through for everybody’s comfort. It is not a junk yard. The filthiness of gutters are so legendary, it is considered the worst of luck to fall into one of them. In fact, many old popular jokes involve people falling into those water ways.

 

The Nigerian Gutter

There is one interesting thing I discovered during my investigations on impromptu litter; I discovered that arguably half of the litter was the famous pure water sachet. There are of course many obvious answers to why the pure water makes up the most litter. It is cheap water, and all the filthy people need cheap water.

 

Pure Water Sachet

Then there is the dunghill. The dunghill has a life cycle (just like the butterfly). First the dunghill is created when everyone in a community agrees that a particular part of the street is for dumping garbage (egg stage). Then everyone dumps their garbage and the dung hill is growing rapidly (larva stage). Some dunghills are fed so much so fast that they grow fat and bulky and in some habitat they have been known to take some swallow vital parts of the road (pupae stage). Then finally, when the dunghill appears to be causing direct harm to its location someone takes it upon themselves to burn it (adult stage). In some rare scenarios, the dunghill is kidnapped by the government to be incinerated elsewhere. The dunghill always leaves some tiny eggs in that location in the form of an empty pure water bag or the Gala wrap for the cycle to begin again.

 

A Young Dunghill Growing from its Egg

It’s nearly ironic how many Nigerians are the causes of their own problems. Staying in a dirty environment not only has an obvious health effect of the indigenes of that area but it also has a negative psychological effect. Leila Glen from www.busyclean.co.uk has written that dirty places causes people to be more prone to stress, depression, poorer relationships and poorer productivity.

WHAT IS THE SOLUTION?

Eliminating the various species of dunghills before the egg even develops is one way. Also, the provision of more public waste bins in strategic locations will most likely stop the average pedestrian from throwing things on the ground.

Like I mentioned earlier, most of these things are our fault. If that agidi woman was brought up in the same family I came from, throwing junk out the window would be an abomination. Endeavour to start a change from your side. Brighten your corner! It is a problem of negative socialization.

The government should also start to fine people for littering. That way the vast majority of policemen can find something else to do aside begging and stealing. It doesn’t end there, the government can also provide more street cleaners alongside with litter policies.