The Lagos State Government on Sunday insisted that the Oko - Oba Abattoir would remain closed until the operators are ready to sit down with the government, abide by the environmental rules and regulations of the state.
Speaking while featuring on a popular live TV programme, the Commissioner for the Environment and Water Resources, Mr. Tokunbo Wahab said the abattoir will only be open when the operators are willing to comply with the minimum standards of operating a decent abattoir in the state.
He recalled that that the State Government on last Thursday shut down the Oko Oba Abbatoir over unsanitary activities, waste mismanagement and unhygenic handling of animal products.
He said there are people who have assets outside the abattoir and the unsanitary activities/ waste mismanagement practiced by the operators have destroyed these assets, stressing that this has been the complaints of residents for some time now.
According to him, "we had to make very tough, decisive decisions. And before then, we had conversation with the operators to shape up. This idea of blackmailing the government on the ground of religion is not sustainable. This practice of slaughtering of cows in the old way and channeling the waste into the public infrastructure is not acceptable and when the operators persisted, we had to shut the place down".
He said the Oko Oba operators are difficult to deal with recalling that the government took them outside the country some years back to see how animals are slaughtered in a mechanized way.
He said the closure was precipitated by the Commissioner for Agriculture who sent a petition to his Ministry to intervene as regards the deteriorating environmental degradation and when environment officials got to the place on Thursday, what was witnessed was heart wrenching as such the government took a decisive decision of shutting down the place.
According to him, At the abattoir, people pushed the animals out of the pen and they sleep there. They just put those animals outside the pen. The pens were created for the animals. Now, they have chosen to push those animals out of the pen in a slaughter house while they live their normal lives there".
"You can still put your animals in the pen whilst somebody else will watch over them for you. You can have a decent place to lay your heads. You can not push the animals out. You can not kill and then you allow the blood, the waste from the animals to be channeled into the system and destroy people houses in that neighbourhood, you can go and find out. Most of them have vacated their houses and sleep at the abattoir.The stench from there is unbearable" he said.
"The state has been carrying out this awareness over time. It was because of their recalcitrant nature. Some of them, with due respect. It's part of their culture that they have to sleep with their animals in the same space. But once they are migrating with their herds, that you see them closely guarding them. But this is a safe state. There is no place for that" he added.
He said some of the abattoir operators are incorrigible because the next day the government got informed that they had moved some animals to a nearby abandoned gas station to slaughter while some slaughtered animals by the road saying some enforcement team members have been stationed there now to prevent these.
"The government shut the abattoir because of the public overiding interest. People have thrown up questions to say, but the cost of meat and beef will go up. And I ask them, which comes first, the chicken or the egg? This is for public safety here. What we saw on ground, we had no choice. And because they have chosen to defy the law"
He said Lagos is not an Hobessian state, where Life becomes nasty, brutish, and shut as such once there is a law, once there are regulations, the least the people can do is to abide by them for their own overiding interest.
He explained that the Ministry of Agriculture, oversees the activities of the abattoir, with LASEPA and LAWMA officials on ground as well as LASWAMO officials in order to ensure things are properly done in the abattoir.
He said the government had met with the Concessionaire (Harmony ) and the leader of the Abattoir operators (Galadima) and insisted they cannot continue to discharge animal wastes into the public drain that was built with tax payers money, but they should ensure animal wastes are properly treated through the effluent plant.
"What they are doing there has to stop. There must be a change of culture and attitude. Those blood, those waste destroy even the public infrastructure. I'm not even talking about the health. In the Themes Agenda, you have health and environment. Because it's cause and effect. If you manage the environment well, you don't spend so much on health. It's cause and effect"
He said the mechanized infrastructure are in place at the Abattoir with just 10% usage rate and semi - mechanized with 10%. usage as well but the operators chose to go with what is convenient for them, the old habits, stressing that there are guidelines in abattoirs operations in the state which must be followed failure to do so, "Oko - Oba abattoir will remain closed"
He said Lagos is a coastal state and as such is exposed to some climate change challenges which include sealevel rise, excessiverainfall and excessive heat added that when the state experiencedthe first and the second, sea level rise, excessive rainfall, there will be a lock-up in lagoon.
According to him, Excessive rain is real, Excessivity heat is real. Flooding in countries that we never used to have flooding are having issues.Hurricanes in areas we never used to have them. These are climate warrants.
He said flash flooding is experienced in some areas because they are low-lying areas.l, they werereclaimed as such residents should always be patient.
He said because climate change is real residents aresupposed to plant trees just like LASPARK has planted over 20,000 this year and residents must also learn the culture of having green areas instead turning the states into a concrete jungle in order to mitigate the effects of climate change.
He said in order to profer solution to the issue of flooding, the Ministry has removed about 1,141 contraventions to restore the drainage system becausethe environmental law that was signed in 2017 gives the Ministry the power to remove those contraventions.And then the law provides consequences for bad doing.
"For instance, if you were to build close to a primary channel, you must leave six meters both sides as thiswill enable government to maintain the channel and secondary collector is three meters both sides.But when people choose to be very bad in their approach to the environment, they build on those channels, believing there are no consequences for it" he said.
He recalled that two years ago some contraventions were removed from the alignment of Ikota channel and Odo Iya Alaro in Kosofe in order to find a lasting solution to the flooding issues in the areas and restore the right if way.
He said it has been observed that some developers are planning to build on some wetlands areas in Iketu, Agbowa, Magodo amongst other places but the government kept pushing back because encroachment on wetlands in the state can never be allowed.
I want the residents to be patient with the government, Infrastructures do not get to be in place overnight. In the past two years the government cleaned up about 666,000 primary channels and 397 secondary collectors in order to restore the right of way These are processes that will manifest with time. If you're going to put in place a drainage tripezoidal, you will not finish it in a year" he said
"But at the end of the day, let us take ownership of our environment. If nature says to us there will be heavy rainfall, that there will be tidal and then there will be excessive heat let us play our parts too. On our own part as a government, we would continue to show more respect for the environment". Wahab added
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