Nigeria raises committee on pesticide management

The Governor of Lagos State, Babatunde Raji Fashola, has inaugurated a 13-member steering committee on Nigeria-Africa Stockpile Programme.

The Nigeria ASP is a project funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and the government of Nigeria to strengthen Nigeria’s capacity for pesticide management and prevention of future accumulation of publicly held obsolete pesticides and associated waste.

The governor, who was represented by the Commissioner of Environment, Dr. Muiz Adeyemi Banire, stressed that inaugurating the committee was crucial as his administration is concerned for the well-being of citizens in the state.

The committee’s objective was to reduce the risk of obsolete pesticides to human beings and the environment, as the adverse effects of these results in cancer, memory loss, anxiety, early pregnancy loss, spontaneous abortions, reduction in fertility, disruption in kidney function, livers blood or digestive tracts and death of humans, plants and animals.
Members of the committee were drawn from key stake-holding ministries and associations, including agriculture, environment, health, information, industry, farmers association, market association, woman association, Nigerian Union of Journalists and non-governmental organizations.

The governor charged the committee to identify the root of the accumulation of the stocks and adopt measures to stall the trend. He also told the members to inventorize publicly held obsolete pesticide stocks and identify the quantity of contaminated containers, equipment, soil and other materials to ascertain the amounts of pesticide formulation, in order to deal comprehensively with the problem.

Fashola stressed the need for public enlightenment campaign to educate the populace of the imminent danger in obsolete pesticides and a regulation on pesticide application to protect the public from pesticide misuse.

Special Adviser to the Governor on the Environment, Hon. Sesan Olanrewaju, who stood in for the Dr. Banire, in his welcome address, revealed that the Nigeria-Africa Stockpile Programme had concluded the training of field officers with one of the officers in the state included with the intent of taking inventory of publicly held obsolete pesticides in all the states of the federation for the eventual management and disposal.

He opined that with this inauguration, it is hoped that the Committee would speed up the facilitation of the coming of inventory field officers to take stock of public-held obsolete pesticides.

In his goodwill message, the Project Coordinator, Mr. Theodore Nwaokwe declared that Lagos was the fifth in the line up of States to set up and inaugurate it’s committee for Nigeria ASP programme implementation and urged all hands to be put on deck to make the project a success in the State.He charged them to ensure that all expired pesticides are promptly mopped up and the cans of expended ones properly disposed of to reduce the environmental degradation caused by obsolete pesticides.