Dishonouring the dead, endangering the living

How residents of Kurudu Gbagyi community in Nigeria’s Federal Capital and their dead struggle for space with a burgeoning refuse dump sited atop the communal cemetery

 

By Nnamdi Okosieme

 

All over the world, the cemetery is the final resting place of man after life has left him. It is designed to be a tranquil and serene environment where the living remember and honour their departed family member, friends and associates by laying wreaths and other flowers on their graves.

In African cosmology the dead enjoy a reverence beyond what is accorded their peers in other parts of the world. Here, there is an intricate linkage between the dead, the living and the unborn because the dead are believed to exert a measure of influence on the affairs of the living while indirectly determining the trajectory of the life of the unborn.

Dishonouring the dead

In Kurudu Gbagyi, a small sleepy community in Abuja, the nation’s Federal Capital Territory (FCT) in North Central Nigeria, the story is not quite the same. There, the memory of the dead is dishonoured and their resting place desecrated.

Nestling in the very heart of the community is the communal cemetery where for over 50 years indigenes and other members of the community have been and continue to be buried.

A first time visitor to the community would hardly notice the cemetery for it has been buried beneath a choking mound of refuse spanning several metres in circumference. In a bizarre and illogical twist of reasoning, the final resting place of the dead has been converted to a waste disposal site with the dead as it were choking and chafing silently under its putrid emissions.

The refuse dump reaching over two metres at its peak is the favourite calling spot of, animals especially goats, dogs and fowls. In their numbers, the animals swoop on the refuse, which comprises an assortment of materials ranging from used diapers and sanitary pads, discarded food, cartons, discarded clothes, electronic waste, used syringes, household items like pots and pans, and other non-biodegradable items like broken plastic materials including buckets, cups, bottles and bowls as well as nylon bags.

Aside the animals, other regular callers at the site include a growing army of scavengers who ransack the dump for materials of some value with which they either keep for personal use or sell for sustenance. These scavengers, which include a growing number of children oblivious to the danger posed to their health by their constant visit to the site, often leave the place worse off in two principal ways. In turning the refuse over in search of items they cause the dump the noxious gases trapped within to burst out, spiral into the air and travel into the homes of residents in the community. They also cause the refuse to spill onto the road and litter the environment. In addition to the scavengers, there is an increasing number of people mostly adult males who engage in open defecation around the edges of the refuse dump.

Dehumanizing the living

On different sides of the burgeoning refuse are homes of the members of the community whose lives are endangered by the miasmic emissions emanating daily from it. Aside the homes of the indigenes located close to the refuse dump, there are a number of schools mostly nursery, primary and secondary, and a health centre close by whose occupants are also exposed to the danger of the deadly doses of noxious gases issuing forth from it. A number of operators of businesses like food canteens and bars around there have since wound up or scaled down their operations owing to dwindling patronage.

One of the residents of the community, Mr. Davis Giwa, a retired civil servant described the situation in the community as deplorable. Giwa, who is also a landlord, said his plans of enjoying a blissful retirement after years of dedicated service to his country, has been ruined by citing of the refuse dump a few metres away from his home.

 

“The challenges we face with the refuse here are enormous, “he said. “It is not healthy at all. When it rains, you discover the spillage; you see dirty water having one strange pouring down here, which is very hazardous to us. We can’t sleep at night; the odour, the flies, the maggots-these are a challenge to our health,” Giwa said.

Giwa said that beyond the danger the refuse posed to him and members of his family, he had also suffered economically from having the dump cited close to his home. He said before the place became a refuse dump he had tenants and from their rent he was able to augment the little pension he gets from the government. He said things are different today as all his tenants have left his place citing the danger posed to their health by the mound of refuse. He said since they left no one has agreed to come and live as tenant in his house.

“I do not blame them. If I were in their shoes I would do the same thing. One’s health and well-being are important above everything else. I am stuck in this place because it is my house and I cannot abandon it to go and live in another man’s house. Besides, I do not even have the money to do so,” Giwa said.

If Giwa’s case is deplorable, the case of Madam Asibi Kuyembo, another resident of the community is worse. Asibi, the daughter of Zaknayi Kuyembo the late Esu of Kurudu the community’s traditional head who passed on in 2016, has her house directly facing the dump. Her gate is separated from the dump by the road, which is just slightly more than two metres wide at that particular axis.

Kuyembo who dissolved into tears while recounting her ordeal, said she had suffered a lot living directly opposite the refuse. Like Giwa, she has lost existing tenants with no one prospect of attracting new ones.

“See the way my house is? No one comes here to rent a room here. If a prospective tenant comes, he or she would be discouraged by the refuse dump directly opposite my house,” she said sobbing.

“When it rains entrance to my house is often littered with faeces and other debris from the dump making it difficult sometimes to go in or out. Besides, you see dirty, smelly water trickling into my compound from the refuse collected opposite. I cannot stand the choking smell that wafts into my house everyday regardless of the time of day,” she added.

She stated that living inside her house is a trying experience as she has to endure the heat and shut all her windows to keep the putrid smell out. She said she had lately devised a means of escape by staying several hours at her small shop where she sells a few household items. That shop scarcely the size of a telephone booth and located a little far away from her home on the other side of the community, has become a haven for her.

“I stay there long into the night to escape the unpleasant smell at home. I only go home when I am drowsy. Were it a normal shop, I would have been spending my nights there,” she said.

On the opposite side of Kuyembo’s house and sharing a fence with the refused dump is an uncompleted building built up to lintel level. She said the owner having spent over one million naira abandoned it when it became clear that he was going to be living next to waste disposal site.

“He has not come back since he left three years ago. Who will blame him? Look at me living opposite the dump and finding it difficult to cope with the stench; for him, it is even worse. He will be living in the midst of it. How can he survive?” she asked.

For Mr. Simon Giwa, a Civil Servant and Mr. Ambrose Omeke, their situation is just as deplorable. Simon, who has been living in the community for several years, said the whole scenario is like a dream. He said he and members of his family are seriously inconvenienced by the presence of the refuse dump close to his house, which directly opposite that of Davis Giwa.

“We find it very difficult to breathe well inside the house because of the bad smell coming from the refuse dump. Outside, we have to tread carefully to avoid stepping on faeces and other unpleasant deposits washed into our street from the refuse dump by the rain. We have really been facing hell here for the last three years,” Simon said.

For Omeke whose house is a few blocks away from the Kyuembo’s, the inconvenience is no less severe.

“I am one of the people the refuse dump is affecting seriously. When the rain falls you cannot eat in your house because of the smell and when there is strong wind you will see nylons and other light materials flying in the air; most of the time they end up inside my well. I have long since abandoned the use of the well because of this,” Omeke said.

Adjacent to Omeke’s house on the other side of the road is a health centre. The health facility set up in 2013 as a project of the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) is also affected by the presence of the dump site in the area.

The stench from the refuse dump is easily perceived at the health centre. It was learnt that residents of the area are abandoning the centre in droves preferring to go to a similar facility in Jikwoyi, a distance of about two kilometres.

No one was willing to speak on record about the challenges faced by the health centre. The head doctor in charge of the facility was said to be out of the office but a staff there who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity decried the situation.

“A hospital or health centre is a place where the sick go to get well. They do not expect that their situation would be compounded there. I mean, who wants to go to a health centre that skinks from time to time? Because of this, patients who used to come here for treatment are now going to nearby places like the Jikwoyi Health Centre and one run by Catholics somewhere in Gidandaya. Who even thought up this crazy idea of citing a refuse dump so close to a place sick people go to get well?” the health centre staff asked.

Learning and choking

Another victim of the citing of the refuse dump in the community is BextPath Academy, a thriving school with nursery, primary and secondary sections. Originally located on a space directly opposite the site of the refuse, the management of the school had to relocate to a position about two houses behind Giwa’s. This was done in the hope that the stench coming from the dump would be drastically reduced.

That hope has proved forlorn as the entire school- students, teachers and management alike have to live daily with the stench emanating from the refuse. At the initial stage, the school battled both the stench and the smelly water issuing from the refuse whenever it rained. Now, they have managed to channel the water away from the school’s premises by building a dam of sorts.

“It has not been easy for us coping with that refuse dump especially during the rainy season. When it rains the stench is horrible. Although we have been able to divert the water so that it doesn’t flow into our compound there is still the risk of the children contracting cholera and other water borne diseases. Although the children don’t drink the water in the taps here, there’s always that danger of disease or an epidemic given the water source as they wash their hands,” Mrs. Angelina Fashipe, the principal of the school said.

Mrs. Fashipe said that aside the horrible stench posing a danger to the health and well-being of everyone in the school, the refuse situated close to the school is affecting its finances.

“The stench from the refuse is chasing prospective students away. A lot of parents have come here to make enquiries about the school and have raised questions about the location of the refuse and the danger it poses to students. Even some parents of existing students have hinted their children may not return next term is something is not done about it,” Fashipe said.

A bizarre decision

So, just how did a refuse dump find itself not only in the heart of a thriving community complete with schools and a health centre but equally on top the burial place of the dead?

All fingers pointed to Chief Ezra Goma, the District Head or Hakimi of Kurudu. Residents of the community say that sometime late in 2016 he reached agreement with the government to make the cemetery a refuse collection centre. They said the idea of using the cemetery as a collection centre for waste had been mooted by the Hakimi but had been strongly resisted by members of the community. They said he had made a strong case for the use of the location as dump and eventually had his way.

“It has been three years since that decision was taken. Suddenly, the place was filled with refuse. Initially we were told it would be evacuated within a week. Later it was extended to two weeks; those two weeks have stretched to three years and the refuse is still piling up,” Kuyembo said. Her account is corroborated by Giwa.

“Three years ago we were told that they were going to make this place a refuse collection centre; that is they would be bringing refuse to dump here and that AMAC’s (AMAC is the Abuja Municipal Area Council under which the community falls)environmental sanitation department would come from time to time to evacuate them. It has been three years since and they have not come even once,” Giwa said.

 

So, just how did a refuse dump find itself not only in the heart of a thriving community complete with schools and a health centre but equally on top the burial place of the dead?

All fingers pointed to Chief Ezra Goma, the Village Head or Hakimi of Kurudu. Residents of the community say that sometime late in 2016 he reached agreement with the government to make the cemetery a refuse collection centre. They said the idea of using the cemetery as a collection centre for waste had been mooted by the Hakimi but had been strongly resisted by members of the community. They said he had made a strong case for the use of the location as dump and eventually had his way.

“It has been three years since that decision was taken. Suddenly, the place was filled with refuse. Initially we were told it would be evacuated within a week. Later it was extended to two weeks; those two weeks have stretched to three years and the refuse is still piling up,” Kuyembo said. Her account is corroborated by Giwa.

“Three years ago we were told that they were going to make this place a refuse collection centre; that is they would be bringing refuse to dump here and that AMAC’s (AMAC is the Abuja Municipal Area Council under which the community falls)environmental sanitation department would come from time to time to evacuate them. It has been three years since and they have not come even once,” Giwa said.

When contacted, Chief Goma denied responsibility for the decision to use the communal cemetery as a refuse collection centre. He said the decision was taken by his immediate past predecessor, late Chief Kuyembo who provided the burial ground for the disposal of communal waste.

“It was the late village head that gave the go ahead for the place to be used as a refuse collection centre.  I was not party to the decision at all. When I took over, I did not want to appear to be dismantling the structures he had put in place or overturn the decisions he had taken. I wanted to settle down and assess things for myself and see whether they were changes to be made. This was important because you know how people are. If you take hasty decisions they will accuse you of malice; some may even go as far as saying I was happy he died,” Goma said.

He said he had made frantic efforts to see that the refuse was evacuated including writing to the then Minister of the FCT, Mohammed Bello and getting the chairman of AMAC, Alhaji Abdullahi Candido to come on an inspection of the site. He said these failed to yield result.

Goma’s second in command, Mr. Yohana Zago, the Madakin Kurudu who spoke through an interpreter, said it was not the fault of the leadership of the community but that of AMAC, which reneged on the agreement it had with the community after assuring it of its readiness to regularly dispose the waste.

Reminded of the danger to the health of members of the community particularly the children that the continued presence of the waste dump represented, he said it was up to AMAC to do the needful.

“We have done our best. It is the responsibility of AMAC as our father to clear the refuse. There is nothing else we can do. In the end, if we have to die from the heap of refuse, we die”.

When this reporter contacted the Supervisory Councillor in charge of the Environment at AMAC, Hon. Gabriel Bravo, he confirmed that AMAC was indeed aware of the problem and was doing something about it. He said they are presently holding discussions with the Abuja Environmental Protection Board to “sort out some grey areas” before action can be taken.

The looming danger

Indeed, death from the avalanche of refuse in the community is a clear and present danger to everyone. With many children residing in the community and more in schools around particularly BextPath Academy a few metres away, the spectre of the outbreak of an epidemic is real.

Studies have shown that open disposal of public waste has grave implications for the health of the people living in the vicinity.  While there are no exact figures, it is estimated that Nigeria generates over than 32 million tons of solid waste annually with just about a third of it collected.

In a 2016 study on the public health implications of poor municipal waste management in Nigeria published in the Vom Journal of Veterinary Science, Solomon Ngutor Karshima, a lecturer at the Department of Veterinary Public Health and Preventive Medicine at the University of Jos, Nigeria, noted that management of municipal solid waste in Nigeria has been neglected by the government, its environmental agencies and the public.

“The management of this waste is gradually becoming a major challenge in developing countries like ours as a result of industrialization, urbanization and the increasing human and animal populations. The increasing demand for food and other life essentials arising from the increasing global population results in increased amount of waste, which are not adequately managed in Nigeria resulting in the contamination of air, water and soil. These environmental contaminations pose serious public health threats,” Karshima noted.

He identified the health issues such as direct injuries from contaminated sharp objects, water contamination by excreta and heavy metal components of municipal solid waste as well as floods resulting from drain obstructions. He said these culminate in the possibilities for the transmission of food and water borne zoonoses (also known as zoonosis and as zoonotic diseases, they are infectious diseases caused by bacteria, viruses, and parasites that spread between animals), vector-borne diseases and the emergence and re-emergence of new zoonoses.

Continuing he said heavy metals including lead, cadmium, mercury, and arsenic from municipal solid waste are also washed into surface and groundwater posing serious public health threats. He identified the common sources of these heavy metals as paint containers and other lead-coated containers for lead, cadmium batteries and cigarette stumps for cadmium. He listed others as broken mercury thermometers and barometers for mercury and containers of arsenic pesticides and wood preservatives for arsenic many of which are found at the Kurudu Gbagyi refuse dump.

He said these substances, which are not recycled in Nigeria are frequently dumped together with household waste leading to the contamination of drinking water sources for humans and animals. He said the health effects of heavy metals are often life-threatening and include headache, irritability, memory deterioration, diminished intellectual capacity, kidney damage, liver disease and bioaccumulation that leads to cancer.

Costly buck-passing

If the Chief of the community and members of his council appear to be resigning themselves to fate, other members of the community have not been taking the matter lying down. A few of them have written letters to Karishi Area offices of the Satellite Towns Development Department of AMAC and the Federal Capital Territory Authority (FCTA) Satellite Towns Development Department. They said they also held meetings with officials of the two offices and they had promised to help but that such promises had come to nought.

When this reporter visited the AMAC Area office in Karishi, a female official who agreed to speak on the condition that her name be kept out of the story, acknowledged that the Kurudu Gbagyi residents had indeed written to them and had met with the then coordinator of the office, a certain Hon. Yamawo.

She said the coordinator was in the process of sorting out the matter when the elections held and swept him out of office. She said a new coordinator was appointed for the office but he stayed barely two weeks and left and that a new one had just been appointed. She advised this reporter to return the next day to meet with him. At their office the following day, the story changed. The lady official was not in the office neither was the coordinator who was said to have gone out on an assignment.

In a dramatic twist, the officials denied it was their responsibility to clear the refuse as they had no environmental sanitation department. They directed the reporter to the FCTA office just directly opposite theirs.

At the FCTA the Director in charge of Environmental Services was not available. Attempts to get his deputy to comment proved futile as he insisted he was not authorized to speak on the matter. However, another official who volunteered to speak off record said the department was well aware of the problems faced by the Kurudu Gbagyi community having received correspondence from them and met with delegations from the community.

Shedding light on the decision to locate the refuse dump within the Gbagyi community, the official said the original waste collection centre was situated on the outer part of the community along the Nyanya-Karishi Expressway. He said a giant refuse collection bin had been provided and was supposed to be evacuated regularly. He said this did not happen as procurement officials in the FCTA sabotaged the programme by getting unqualified contractors to handle the job.

“Let me tell you what snowballed the problem over there. There was this spot opposite La Vogue (a school with nursery, primary and secondary sections). We had a container there opposite the school. It has been there for more than three years or so. We were supposed to keep evacuating the refuse but what we had was irregular evacuation and epileptic service by the contractors. They failed to evacuate the refuse as and when due. It was not surprising.

“Before those contractors were engaged we had done our homework very well, made our in-house estimates and recommendations and forwarded it to procurement for action but procurement procured the people they wanted. And these were people without the technical know-how; without equipment and even the personnel. They didn’t know the job. So, what do we do? I thought the procurement process was to solve problems but this one has created more problems. We are not satisfied with what is happening but we cannot help it. Ours is to keep warning them. At a point we wrote that the contract of the contractors be terminated because they were performing below average but because of politics up there, nothing happened. So, they did what they wanted to do and if anything happens, we have our records,” the official said.

He stated that because the contractors failed to do their job the waste spilled onto the road creating all manner of problems including disrupting the free flow of traffic. He said because of it the decision was taken to move the refuse collection centre deeper within the community proper.

He said the challenges faced by their office were multi-faceted chief of which were the structure of the FCTA Satellite Towns Development Department itself and funding.

He said before now the entire FCTA office had just one director working under a coordinator who was a political appointee. He stated that under that arrangement it was often difficult to push through programmes and projects as the coordinator may not treat such projects with the seriousness and urgency they deserved. He stated that at the moment, the coordinator had been removed and his replacement was being awaited.

Continuing he said that even where approval was obtained, lack of funds often proved to be an obstacle. He said this was the case with the refuse dump at the Gbagyi community where after former coordinator of the office had been convinced of the necessity of disposing the refuse and had written to the immediate past minister of the FCT for funds, nothing had come out of it.

“It is our responsibility to clear the waste at that dump but we are constrained by paucity of funds. Because of that we have not contracted any firm to do the job. From the look of things, the situation may get worse this year because five months into the new administration of President Buhari there is even no minister to exert pressure on. Worse still, the allocation for environmental services under the 2019 budget has been slashed by 50 percent,” the official said.

Recourse to self-help

Over the years as government officials dithered and engaged in buck passing and with the leadership of the community appearing helpless, other members of the community have tried on their own to bring an end to the menace posed by the waste.

Mrs. Magdalene Osagie, the owner of BextPath Academy and other concerned residents of the community including Giwa, Simon and Omeke have been in the forefront of efforts in this regard. Mrs. Osagie, who decried the danger posed by the waste to students and staff of her school, said the school had spent a lot of money in trying to solve the problem.

“It has been difficult coping with the stench and other inconvenience occasioned by the presence of the refuse close to us here. Initially the authorities said they would evacuate it every three months but it never happened. We have written to the Hakimi who is the head of the community but nothing has come out of it. We have also written to the FCTA Satellite Towns Development Department in Karishi calling on them to assist us. At a point they sent one of their officials, one Mr. Idowu on assessment of the situation. Nothing came out of that too.

“Without help coming from anywhere, the school has had to take on the responsibility of evacuating the waste at least on three occasions spending over one hundred thousand Naira in the process. It has not been convenient for us spending this money because the school’s finances have dwindled partly as a result of the withdrawal of students by their parents because of the refuse dump but we have been constrained to do it because the health of our students and teachers are paramount in our calculations,” Mrs. Osagie said.

She added that to prevent further spillage of waste onto the road, the school had to construct a perimeter fence along the edge of the refuse bordering the road. She disclosed that because there were no guards securing the place, the fence had been breached in places by those dumping refuse causing a spill on the road.

“We are helpless. We cannot continue to shoulder the responsibility because it is an enormous one. We are calling on government to come to our rescue before the situation degenerates to an epidemic,” Mrs. Osagie added.

Her cry is echoed by Simon who says the people of the community are not asking for too much from government. He says Government should come and evacuate the waste.

 

 

“We just want to live here in peace and health. What we have endured these last three is best left to the imagination. We cannot continue to live like this. We had suggested that the people in charge come and evacuate the refuse and get people to secure the area so that they can control the dumping of refuse here but no one has listened to us. They should do something and quickly too before we all die,” Simon said.