SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY REPORTING

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.