THE EFFECTS OF HABITUAL ACTIVITIES ON SURFACE WATER BODIES-EDITORIAL

It is a surprise that some people of Otta, who live near the ILO River, know that they are dying but there is little or nothing they can do about it. The abattoir at the ILO River near the toll gate area at Otta is in a state of chaos as every activity done there is dangerous to human health. This ranges from recreational activities such as swimming, to drinking, washing and killing of cows and sharing them for sale.

However, the degradation level of this river is rather alarming. The water has lost its value and health benefits and has turned from a blessing to a burden to the people who make use of it- both the abattoir workers and the residents around it.

The location of the abattoir is an issue on its own. For convenience, most abattoirs in this country are located near streams and rivers, where the workers can get easy access to water. The problem with this is that, the workers do not have the patience or time to wash the meat form the cow, clean as it ought to be and diseases can be transferred easily through this means, especially when the meat is not washed and cooked well by the final consumer.

 It is quite obvious that the location is a wise decision but the point is that this is mere selfishness as they throw the burnt debris and blood into the water bodies. As a result of this, the water gradually begins to become contaminated. It is important to note that it’s not only the waterways with this pollution affects but it also affects human health because the blood of the animals might be infected one way or the other and a number of people drink from this water without knowing this, also the smoke from the burnt debris creates air pollution which is also hazardous. Some other people get diseases from this river from going to swim or they use it to take their bath, wash their clothes and perform other domestic activities and this is because there is little or no choice for them.

Diseases that could arise as a result of this pollution are known as Zoonotic diseases and they include: basilosis, samonelosis, boselosis or other simple and common diseases include tapeworm- which can be transferred directly from animals, severe or acute diarrhea- uncontrolled vomiting and defecation (stooling) at the same time.

The government needs to get involved in this health issues. They should help shift the location of the abattoirs. They should construct special facilities for the killing of cows and these facilities must have adequate water supply and effective waste management scheme. Researchers should also be employed to carry on researches about this water bodies and new development should be announced to the community, the country and the world in general. The government should make sure of the availability of free or cheap and efficient drugs to the affected victims of the water-borne disease especially those at the grass root level. Awareness should also be created both verbally and in the media about this diseases and ways of contacting them, to both the residents and the non residents. The government can also find alternative sources of water for the residents of Otta who live and this ILO River. This will decrease the mortality rate in that area. The media can be used to generate awareness on how raw materials like blood can be repackaged to generate gas that can be used for cooking, to power a generator and also used for fish and pig food.

In all this, we hope that the government will take note of this issue, we hope that the government would listen to our recommendations for a better tomorrow for all Nigerians and we also hope the residents of Otta who benefit from the ILO river, would try their possible best to safe guard their health.

FEATURE STORY

Do you know how funny a person and his/her family would wake in the morning, have their bath and would be ready to eat breakfast not caring on how the meat appeared in the market for the parents to be able to purchase it and how it got to the market in the very first place, all they care about is the meat they can see on their plates and how well they are going to devour the meat, while so much work as been done just to get the meat out of the flesh of an animals and how it has been packaged for distributions to shops where they can buy the item, the place where the killing of the animal is done known as the ABATTOIR.

There are different sections in an abattoir and they include sections for meat packaging, meat packing, and distribution of carcass to retailer. The reason for creating a site where killing of the animals can be done was simply because of the high demand of meat, and most abattoirs are located in areas that are surrounded by water as this is to allow free flow of the remains of the animal’s body into the water which in turn causes water pollution to the neighboring communities or places, not only does it cause water pollution it also disturbs the free flow of frequency of the river. In an interview with a lecturer in Covenant University, Engineer D.O Omole, he enlightened us on the effects of abattoir to the velocity of the water. According to him, during his masters programme he chose to do the research work on this topic in developing countries saying that from his observations, there has arisen a degradation of the environment as a result of too much waste load going into the river. Usually, a river purifies itself from waste, however, when the waste becomes too much, then the river can no longer purify itself making the water unsafe for any form of use.

Ways to stop this pollution include introduction of the Bio-gas measures to purify the odour that comes from the abattoir site but for abattoirs that have bio-gas system they can make use of the waste as a means of getting something useful out of the animals blood, carcass, or bones. For instance the blood of  several animals can be used for preparation of pig food, fish food and many other animal food, the carcass can be used as fertilizers to nourish the food for the crops to grow. These are some of the positive ways to neutralize the negative side of the abattoir.

There are laws and regulations that have been put in place for the running of an abattoir but in Nigeria, the rules and regulations laid down by the government have not been followed because this people working in the abattoir need the money to take care of their family. So to them, it is a means of income even if the smell of the environment is hazardous to their health. In a research done in the USA on how jobs are created for the unemployed in the country, over 52,700 workers can be useful in an Abattoir without care about the risks as a result of this work.  

The government should try and refacilitate several abattoirs in their countries so as to not only monitor the way they are doing things but also to help the families of those people working in the abattoir because as the saying goes “ if a man is satisfied he tends to do his job more than expected.

GROUP 5

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY REPORTING

AN INTERVIEW WITH ENGINEER D.O OMOLE A LECTURER IN CIVIL ENGINEERING.

We are here to ask some questions about public researches that have been undertaken in your department?

During my Masters programme, Abattoir…the effects of Abattoir activities, that is where they slaughter animals on the environment, the surface water bodies, on rivers, so I worked on that some few years back, so I’ve also worked on some other projects recently but of course, they’re still in the process of publication but for the masters, it has been published.

Sir, can you say it again, the effects of…

Habitual activities on surface water bodies.

Sir, can you give us the process undertaken in the course of the research?

In the course of the research, the research took about six months. Actually, the bulk of the time went into preparation, first of all, I had to update myself on the latest practice, current practice, let’s put it that way, current practice and that is for you to update yourself in current practice, you have to do literature survey, okay? So that mean you have to read widely. I, I read widely about that subject, what people are doing globally, how it’s being done in different parts of the world, how, and the current practice in Nigeria, you know I had to compare what obtains in developed countries and in developing countries then I now checked my environment, I looked for where there is abattoir activity okay? And I found that at toll gate in Ota here, you know toll gate, there’s an abattoir at toll gate and there’s a river, actually, in Nigeria, most abattoirs are located near rivers and the reason they do that is so as to get water to wash the blood off, unlimited supply of water and then to get rid of their… you know waste and all that, so however, my study was centered around you know, the river purifies itself, naturally the environment purifies itself from every waste, however when you have too much waste load going in, then you have a degradation of the environment, but if the rate at which the waste that is going in is controlled, the river can always purify itself automatically from…so I wrote, I used some equations because I’m in engineering, I used some equations to study the self purification capacity of that river (pause) okay? Ok that was what I worked on, so I studied the self purification capacity of that river and checked some physical parameters that may hinder or enhance that capacity. So that was what my research was all about. So, it involved, I hired a few number of staff, I needed someone the paddle the boat, I was on the river myself, I covered about err 200metres okay? On the river err, I interviewed the abattoir operators themselves, I checked how many cows they kill, what they do with the parts of the animals that go to waste, I travelled along the river and saw that some things were hindering the natural flow. For example weed was growing in between, so the speed of the river …and one of the things that helps the river to purify the river is speed. The faster the river, the quicker it gets cleaned up so the velocity, we call it velocity in engineering, so the velocity was already affected because of the weed, so from the research, from the study, I used some equations to check it okay? So from there, I was able to recommend to government that these are the things that should be done to help that river because many people drink that river downstream so the pollution that comes in…some cows have diseases and when you wash these things off, even the cow that is being sold, when you use this polluted water to wash it, it serves a man who consume, he may not cook it well. So disease can enter the meat from the river and disease can enter the river from the meat okay? So from the findings, I was able to see some of the pollutions and recommend…I took some water samples to the laboratory to test.

The equations that you said you used, does it have a specific name?

Yes, Streeterphelps equation.

Sir, during the course of the research, was there any obstacle you encountered?

Yes there were some, many, but I’ll mention a few. One, the abattoir operators themselves don’t want anybody snooping around their business cause they believe normally… if you go around every abattoir, It’s smelly, they pollute the environment and if there’s any influential person living around that place, usually, they relocate them. So, they have this problem of being relocated from time to time. They lose their operating days. So when they see somebody coming around, they suspect that you’re government official or you’re an influential person who wants to investigate their work and you want to disturb their business. So naturally, they said I should go away; they didn’t want to see me. I had to explain, beg and when you’re doing that kind of research, you have to be able to convince them that err it will benefit them, benefit the society and benefit you the researcher so unless you can convince them that what you’re doing will benefit them, most times, they’ll resist. So I had to find a way to surmount that. Number two was a good laboratory that can test the samples. Some of the parameters that I needed to check was very difficult, at that time Covenant University was not equipped to handle those water samples.

That was in what year?

 That was 2006. So I had to go to Ikorodu road in Lagos with those water samples, I had to travel long distance and some of those samples, some of those parameters had to be tested on the spot, we call them field parameters. The result had to be gotten on the spot but since I didn’t have those equipments. In Lagos, you know how Lagos traffic is, the temperature in the car will change and temperature is one of the parameters…I was supposed to get so naturally it had already changed, many parameters had already changed. So to get err, so that were some of the problems that I encountered

How does this research affect the Covenant University community and the people outside this community?

Yes, I err, has an impact on the people because as I said people drink the water from that river. There are many people that cannot afford borehole, to drink from. There are many people that cannot afford to sink a well. As a matter of fact, many people swim in those rivers as a recreation. Another thing, people fish in the river and any pollutant that enters the fish, when you eat that fish, you get it, you understand, like I said, when you now use the same water to wash your meat, it has a very direct impact on humans and apart from, you know, now there is a drive in the world…the greener environment. That’s environmental degradation, when you keep polluting the environment without care. There are regulations that you shouldn’t do these things directly on the river bodies but these people flout those regulations and keep on degrading the environment. In fact they burn, they burn err, the skin, they need to remove the hair and all that…the grass is also growing because it is getting nutrients from the cow dung

Is there a specific health issue one can get through the pollution of the environment?

There is a group of diseases , we call them Zoonotic diseases err I have a few of them here such as collide bacillosis, salmonelosis, brucellosis. So we have things like tapeworm,.of course, you know what happens when worms enter into people, you know the effects. So all those things that are the diseases that are in animals can be transferred to the human.

After the research, have there been moves to communicate this to the people staying around the area where there is pollution?

One of the ways, okay? So, actually, many of them were informed in the process of the research itself. We told them verbally, however, poverty is a very bad thing. Somebody who is dying knows he is dying but he can’t do anything about it because that’s all he can afford. he can’t sink a borehole, he can’t sink, and even studies have shown that some of this pollution actually gets into  ground. So one of the studies we are doing right now is to study the effect of this industry, you know Ota is an Industrial area so these things get into ground water okay? So we are trying to see if some of these effects of these industries are even affecting Canaan land Ota. We need to check that.

Sir, please what’s the name of the river?

River Ilo.

Sir, what are your recommendations to curbing this pollution

Recommendation, number one and they are many I would like to comment on however, the first one is the operation of the abattoir should be regulated. There are regulations to these things and one of them… you know waste; the biggest pollution in there is the blood that is being washed. The truth is some people actually want the blood 100 percent; you don’t need to wash it into the river they want it, give it to them, they can use it. They use it for pig food, fish food also. It can also be used as a bio-gas raw material to generate gas. The truth is you can actually get cooking gas; you don’t need to buy gas. If you can harness all the waste there, process it, you can generate gas that you can use to cook, very clean gas and very environment friendly, okay? So all these things can be done, number one, you regulate the activities of these people in the absence of using the waste, number two is you know government can come in, put some things in place. It’s possible you won’t even perceive any odour in an abattoir. It’s very possible. Just install your bio-gas systems. All the waste, the dung, the decaying flesh, the one they don’t need. Just put them in the bio-gas digester and close it up to give you a finished product. I mean another product entirely that will be useful. It can even be used to power generators. You will be amazed to know that you can use that thing to power generators. You don’t need to buy diesel or petrol to run your environment. So you can get so very many things if the proper thing is done. The people around that place were sensitized but where else will they get water. That means they have to move entirely from that area or if government or rich individuals can provide alternative source of water.

Do you think the government is sensitized enough to know the advantages they could actually get from helping out in curbing the situation?

I’m very sure that government is aware. The only thing is the willingness, the will power. It’s just like saying is the government aware that the roads are bad. Are they not aware? Why are they not doing it? Somebody stands to benefit from the chaos, that’s the truth. Some people are actually benefitting from the chaos and the money that is necessary to do the repairs, somebody feels, what if I appropriate these funds, I can buy a fleet of jeeps and then millions suffer for one person to drive a jeep. That’s just the cause of the decadence and that’s why we are are hoping that our kings and queens will change the system. New generation of leaders.

GOVERNMENT SHOULD HELP IN ABBATOIR MANAGEMENT IN NIGERIA-ENGR.OMOLE

The government should be willing to help in Abattoir management in Nigeria is an issue that a lecturer in Covenant University, Engineer Omole emphasized while discussing the effects of Habitual activities on surface water bodies.

In an interview with him on the 16th of November, he explained how abattoir operations have caused degradation in the environment as a result of their improper disposal of refuse in the Abattoirs. He explained further that this waste was usually channeled through the rivers using river Ilo in Ota as a case study, thereby resulting in the blockage of the velocity of the water.

He also highlighted the fact that, this unhygienic activities of the Abattoir did not only affect the rivers but it also in turn had adverse effect on human beings as a number of people consume the water that flow from the river Ilo and also use it for domestic purposes.

According to him, latest research has now found out that the waste from these abattoirs are not only affecting the surface water bodies but may have started affecting water under ground level.

However, this is a call to the government of the nation to help regulate the activities of the abattoirs and ensure that there is proper disposal of waste. He also emphasized the need for the government to look into the opportunities that coiuld be gotten from the waste from the abattoirs.