An environmentalist, Dr. Edem Eniang, has warned that indiscriminate disposal of waste can trigger epidemic eruption in the country that may claim many lives in the next 25 years.
“Waste deposit on farm lands and other dumpsites will find their way to streams and when this happens you have caused pollution to both human and aquatic life. We now have strange diseases that we have never heard of. All these are coming from improper waste disposal which pollute the air, land and water,” he said.
Eniang who is the director of Biodiversity Preservation Centre (BPC), a non-governmental organisation in Nigeria advised the federal government to adopt a more appropriate waste disposal system that would address kitchen or farm waste, paper and electronic based waste.
The environmentalist who is a lecturer in the Department of Forestry and Natural Environment Management University of Uyo said wastes were very dangerous to the environment which if not properly disposed would cause health crisis in the country.
He advised both federal and state governments to adopt the approach of recycling waste as it is practised in developed countries of the world.
That, he said, would protect the people from contacting strange diseases in the next 25 years.
He stated that the country had enough expertise that could be commissioned to handle waste management in the country.
