Much of this natural phenomenon has been attributed to the blockade of drains and water ways with solid wastes or substances that do not decay or dissolve easily like numerous products in the plastic family. The unhealthy practice has persisted over a long period because of the prevailing poor waste management by governments and the citizens.
In several urban centres, for instance, the residents dump household refuse into flooded gutters and these are swept away and deposited somewhere in the vicinities. Ancillary to this is the unwholesome culture of hawking wrapped vended food products. Generally, consumers litter the environment with the protective wrappings.
Environmental agencies and workers do not exhibit the level of foresight and preparedness expected of them and evolve strategies in advance in anticipation of seasons of excessive refuse like the arrival of fresh corns in homes and markets. Each year, the environmental agencies are caught asleep as they lack the capacity and resources to deal with the multiple heaps of garbage at refuse dumps resulting from fresh corns among others.
Some months ago, commercial vehicles, the mobile litter bugs, were directed to buy and keep plastic containers for refuse in their vehicles. The motive was to discourage passengers or the driver from dropping unwanted substances through the vehicle windows.
But the policy has not been working. The litter containers may be in the vehicles just to evade the law but they are never used.
It is the same indifferent attitude with disposable pure water sachets which constitute the major plastic products blocking the drains and waterways in urban centres.
Right now, no specific policy or policies have been evolved to deal with the nuisance in built – up areas.
Erecting structures along drainages channels constitute another cog in the wheel. But one wonders how the owners of these structures managed to bulldoze their way through the Owerri Capital Development Authority, OCDA and the Ministry of Lands to have the building plans approved. To stem the costly duplicity, officers in charge of such strategic establishments ought to be closely monitored regularly so that the law will someday expose them just as the naughty wind exposes the rump of a cock.
OCDA field officers straddle the entire Owerri Metropolis scribbling STOP WORK directives on offending buildings and walls. Yet, nothing comes out of it after closed door meetings.
Ideally, OCDA should approve in advance the master plans of areas being developed with provisions for infrastructures like major and access roads as well as waterways or drainages for the channelization of flood water. Because this is not done, some new layouts being developed in parts of the State have become a riot of buildings with no provisions for roads and channelization of flood water. Landlords anxious to maximize the use of plots of lands sold to them by indigenes, erect structures on any available space creating slums for the future under the watchful eyes of the OCDA and the Ministry of Lands.
It really pains that slums are emerging in parts of the State because of the excesses of land speculators and real estate developers, who collude with the OCDA. The tragedy is that demolition of structures is a continuous process with the Rescue Mission administration of Governor Owelle Rochas Okorocha to stem flooding in built up areas.
The State Government should ensure that the OCDA justifies its relevancy in the Rescue Mission Agenda. If the constraint is the law which set it up, it should be amended to give the Authority more powers and teeth.
