Pollutants
By Mustapha Lamidi
Abuja, May 22, 2018 (NAN) Dr Enang Moma, the Bureau Regional Officer of UNESCO in Abuja, has called for the establishment of strong laboratories to monitor emergent pollutants in the country’s rivers and streams.
Moma made the call in Abuja on Tuesday at the opening of a two-day meeting on the “Revitalisation and Strengthening of the National Core Group on Water Quality’’.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the meeting was organised by the Federal Ministry of Water Resources (FMWR) in collaboration with the Water Aid organisation.
The bureau regional officer noted that non-monitoring of pollutants was causing more harm to the quality of water being consumed by Nigerians.
She attributed the low awareness of Nigerians to the problem which could cause health hazard to the citizenry.
Moma said UNESCO had started to build the capacity of experts to address lack of monitoring of pollutants in the country’s rivers and streams.
“We are trying to build the capacity of experts to address this problem. We are going to build one laboratory in Nigeria to tackle the problem of pollutants in the nation’s rivers,’’ she said.
Moma urged all tiers of government and other stakeholders to inaugurate research centres across the country to embark on how to solve the problem of pollutants in the nation’s water system.
“There is the need for the government to work with other stakeholders to get results, and to generate data that can be used to tackle this problem,’’ she said.
NAN reports that FMWR had in 2009 constituted a National Core Group on Water Quality made up of Federal Ministries of Health, Environment and Water, and others.
The rest are the National Water Research Institute (NWRI), Kaduna, UNICEF and the Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON).
The Chairman and secretariat of the group are domiciled in the Department of Water Quality Control and Sanitation.
The National Core Group which was formed to be a driving force for water quality management in Nigeria has been seen not to be carrying out its coordination role effectively.
However, the advent of the Sustainable Development Goal 6 precipitated the need to have an effective platform which will be coordinating water quality in Nigeria.
This thus brought about the need to strengthen the National Core Group for optimal performance.(NAN)
MOL/OLAL
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(Edited by Olawale Alabi)