Saturday, the Lagos State Government joined the rest of the world in commemorating World Clean-Up Day by educating local communities on basic sanitation in an effort to enhance their hygiene practises.
During the sensitisation campaign and clean-up exercise conducted at Alausa Village, Ikeja, Gaji Omobolaji, permanent secretary of the Office of Environmental Services, said that the purpose of the activity is to encourage locals to clean and sanitise their immediate surroundings.
The Permanent Secretary, speaking through the Director of Environmental Education, Mrs. Monsurat Banire, stated that the exercise is a global social action programme that was first observed in Estonia, a European nation in 2018 and is intended to combat the global solid waste problem, including the problem of marine waste.
In addition, there is a significant association between cleanliness and health issues such as malaria, diarrhoea, cholera, and mortality, therefore the environment is just as dependent on humans as humans are on the environment.
According to him, it is everyone’s responsibility to contribute to attaining and maintaining environmental sustainability.
Gaji stated that this year’s exercise focused on cleaning and sensitising the residents of Alausa, and he urged the participants to begin the exercise at the Ministry of the Environment and pick up trash as they walked along Governor’s Avenue, LASEPA, Kafi Street, and into the Jogunosimi Makinde and Odewale communities, where an intensive cleaning exercise was conducted.
He added that due to the state’s huge and growing population, trash creation is an inescapable element of human activity that must be well controlled.
He praised the Baale, lya Oloja, Volunteer Groups, NGOs, CDAs, Community Members, Marketers, Artisans, and all other present participants for the success of the exercise, stating that they are the environmental vanguards.
He advised other citizens to imitate the action in order to provide appropriate environmental preservation, which would lead to the sustained growth of Lagos State.
In his opening remarks, the Director of Sanitation Services, Dr. Hassan Sanuth, urged locals to constantly see sanitation as a civic duty and to regularly maintain their immediate surroundings.
He said that if the State is to become a healthy and productive society capable of contributing to the nation’s long-term growth, then everyone must comprehend the significance of environmental cleanliness and not take it for granted.
In his comments, the Baale of Alausa Land, High Chief Toyin Badmus, thanked the government for the effort and urged locals to assist the government in maintaining a culture of continuous environmental cleanliness and making it a daily practise.
He urged everyone to keep in mind that cleanliness is close to godliness and that unhygienic environmental activities might cause contamination and diseases.