Ibrahima yakubu
In a bid to save lives of millions aquatic plants, animals and other living organism from hazardous waste pollution from community to kaduna River, Dams and other water storage centre ,
A head of world international world wildlife day, A team of environmental NGos ,Climatologist , Youth organizations and communities Volunteers has taken the Campaign to Clean up kaduna River with the aims of saving all the aquatic lives,and other living organism along the river Banks
The Three volunteer environmental and climate groups has Taged the Campaign “Operation cleaning-up Kaduna’s River to save aquatics from plastic and garbage trash.” They are kaduna –metro- environmental creation awareness ,African Climate Reporters, and Kurmin Kaduna Youth Action Awareness Forum.
“Aquatic lives matters and hence the need to joined toward support Government and other stake holders on the need to raise more awareness on the dangers of sensitizing the general public on the harmful effect of throwing away trash on the gutter and street”
World Wildlife Day will be celebrated in 2021 under the theme “Forests and Livelihoods: Sustaining People and Planet”, as a way to highlight the central role of forests, forest species and ecosystems services in sustaining the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people globally, and particularly of Indigenous and local communities with historic ties to forested and forest-adjacent areas.
According to team leader of the operation that lead in the cleaning-up exercise along Kaduna Riverbanks This morning, Comrade Mohammed Zakari, who is assistant director of African Climate Reporters, said they were here to save lives of aquatics and other endangered species from extinction due to human attitudes of dumping all sorts of trash, hazardous chemicals and other poisonous wastes into the River that is causing a serious threat to the existence of all aquatic animals and human beings.
“Our aim is to save water animals from the effect of hazardous waste that were thrown into the gutter that ended up killing aquatics and also to educate, enlighten the public on the effect of dumping trash into river or oceans.
“We tagged today’s exercise as ‘Cleaning-up Kaduna’s River to save lives of aquatics’ – simply because of the dangers they face daily as a result of increasing quantity of trash from the community into the River that killed water animals.
“Water pollution is getting worse day-by-day in Africa due to lack of awareness to the public on the dangers of throwing all sorts of trash into the Ocean, River, ponds and small lakes in Africa.”
Around the 350 million people live within or adjacent to forested areas around the world, relying on the various ecosystem services provided by forest and forest species for their livelihoods and to cover their most basic needs, including food, shelter, energy and medicines.
“we have evacuated over 500,000 plastic waste and other dangerous waste in the river”
He note that, “When water is seriously polluted in a certain area, the soil, plants, animals, fish, and even insects suffer a lot of damages. Fish that live in a polluted water source die off quickly, which in turn causes widespread death in animals that eat those fish for survival.”
He said, they came to Kaduna River with rake, basket, shovel and other useful materials, so as to reduce the large quantity of plastic trash and other forms of garbage that was thrown into the River from the community, which causes series of problems to the aquatics lives.
Comrade Zakari said this is the 5th time they are organizing an activity like this, which is towards cleaning-up the entire surrounding of the riverbanks and some ponds, in order to immensely protect lives of animals in the water, and also to protect humans from water-borne disease.
“Animals, which eat plastics, often starve because they can’t digest the plastic, and it fills their stomachs; as such, this is preventing them from eating real food, which at the end kills the animals.
“There is need to recycle all the waste to save aquatics lives and other animals from the threat of hazardous chemicals and other forms of garbage killing our water animals,” he stated.
According to the African Climate Reporters director, “The essence of today’s activities is to raise more awareness to the public to halt throwing all sorts of trash into the gutter, and to also let them know that these ugly attitudes destroyed thousands of lives of water animals, which can equally affect human beings at the same time.
He then advised the public to Use Less Plastic, Recyclable Options, while calling on Nigerians to Use Environmentally-Friendly Detergents and to Stop Chemical Pollution.
Stressing that World Wildlife Day will celebrate forest-based livelihoods and seek to promote forest and forest wildlife management models and practices that accommodate both human well-being and the long-term conservation of forests, forest-dwelling species of wild fauna and flora and the ecosystems they sustain, and promote the value of traditional practices and knowledge that contribute to establishing a more sustainable relationship with these crucial natural systems.
In his own remarks,comrade jibrin suleman The chef executive director Kaduna metro-environmental awareness,an NGo that educate the society on health implication of environmental pollution
During an interview with the journalists that joined them at Kaduna’s Riverbanks for the operation, mentioned that “In every minute, one garbage truck of plastic is dumped into our oceans, and that is a threat to the existence of animals that live in water and also to human lives.
“Most river fish humans consume, including cat-fish, Tilafia, and other species along the river, have at one time or another ingested plastic microfibers. People dump all sorts of trash into the river or oceans without knowing the consequences to water animals and to even human beings.
“Water-borne diseases are a big problem to the existence of human beings, which need to be tackled through educating the public on the dangers of throwing garbage and other sorts of trash into the river.”
Also responding, The chairman of Youth Action and Awareness Forum Kurmin Kaduna, Mallam Dauda Ismail, said, they came to join the other team that came to the riverbank so as to give them solidarity, in order to clean-up the River Kaduna.
Mallam Ismail stated that “Every first annual rain fall, millions of aquatic animals do usually die as a result of dangerous chemicals that came to the river from the community.”
The team of the volunteer environmentalists and climate experts then called on NGOs and CSO, states and federal government, traditional title holders to sensitize the public on the dangers of throwing trash into gutter and other forms of water-ways, so as to save lives of water animals and the public from drinking
contaminated water.
They equally called on Youth organization, kaduna state water Board, UNICEF, WHO, ministry of health and environment to also support the fight against dumping of trash into Kaduna River by communities.
