Development At The Expense Of Our Health And Peace Of Mind

By Moroti Olatujoye

Over time, exposure and education has brought to us a lot of change, making life easier than we could ever imagine. So much is the ‘good’ that modernization has brought that our leaders forget to make rules, laws to protect this good from causing damage.  My stay in a part of Lagos was the most exhausting point in my life. Even on days I didn’t go to work, it was impossible to get the peace of mind one needs to feels relaxed and mentally sound. So much noise, so much of air pollution, everywhere smelt stuffy, and I think even my skin felt the goodness of my relocation to another city.

In our part of the world where unfortunately things have to be beyond damage before they are repaired or changed, where there are so many supposed bigger problems than protecting the ‘little rights’ of citizens to avoid health hazards, the problem of pollution might be staying for a long time with even the people having no idea of the rights they can exercise.  I remember reading a story on lead poisoning in a northern state, where the children in a little town had suffered greatly because of the natural resources miners tried to tap from their lands, and years after what happened to these children or their parents would not be a surprise as these are the issues we see every day. And until we know the rights that we posses, these cruelty to the less privileged would continue.

A training held by Global Rights helped shaped my view as to the happening in the society that was killing us without us knowing we had the right to fight against it.  The Country Director of the NGO which was keen at not just ensuring that the rights of the people were respected but that the media also had a huge part to play, Abiola Baye said something which is the bases of my article.

‘How much industrialization can we make for the price of Human Lives?’

After the training on encouraging the media fight for the actualization of these rights, I was educated on the actions taken by business owners against members of the public that violated these rights. And unfortunately there’s just so little an article can do in a world where the media is fast becoming for sale. How do you report the stories of a village polluted by a big cement company when the owners of the company have a hand the governing system of the country, or the poor health treatment of children who suffered from lead poisoning in small villages across the country?

Our greatest problem in this unfortunate situation is ignorance, Ignorance on the part of the authority, citizens, media and even business owners.  Perhaps we can start from understanding that having a business entails that you know what the people in the environs stand to get and stand to loose especially health wise. Business owners should also be encouraged and mandated to explain the health hazards if any to their workers and neighbors.

This might be a little difficult in state where there are no concrete govt owned data for these individuals eg miners, so on the part of the govt having a data base for these business owners is very important, that way they are held accountable to their actions and can be held to compensate if case arises.

However the media must do their bit to help bring this to the notice of the government by upholding the responsibility and accountability of the people to the government