3rd March, 2018
Mr Atiku Abubakar, an official of the Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB), has advised postgraduate students of Department of Geography, Nasarawa State University, Keffi to do research in resource recovery in waste management.
Resource recovery in recycling is a practice that refers to the collection and reuse of disposed materials such as empty beverage containers.
The materials from which the items are made can be reprocessed into new product.
Abubakar made the call on Saturday in Abuja, on the sideline of a three-day field visit by the students to Gossa waste dump site.
The students on the first day of the field trip visited the Lower Usman Dam, Bwari, the National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA) on the second day and Wupa Treatment Plant and Gossa Waste Dump Site on the third day.
Abubakar said he would advocate that the students also conduct research into the treatment of waste in order to find solutions to environmental problems.
“Look, all the things you are seeing on the dump site are resources, if they can go into research on resource recovery, the sky is just the beginning for them.’’
According to him, the Gossa waste dump site is about 505 hectares according to the Master Plan.
The official said encroachment had reduced the site to about 350 hectares, saying “and we had to secure where we are dumping now, we had to quickly fence 91 hectares.’’
“Other part of the 350 hectares would be given to us, wherever we have things that have to do with waste management integration.
“What we treat here is mostly domestic and medical wastes,’’ he said.
He, however, called on the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) to increase funding for the waste treatment to ensure environmental sustainability.
The official also urged the authority to ensure policies consistency in waste management operations.
“Our challenge has always been finance and the policies of the government, at times, the slowness in the implementation of the policies affects our operational standards.
“The main thing we want here is to get the administration to look at the effect of waste management in the city and formulate policies that will ensure its effective treatment, recycling and management,’’ he said.
Earlier, the leader of the students, Prof. Nasiru Idris, said students would be carrying out their own fieldwork in-group from the visit to the dump site.
Idris, the Head, Department of Geography in the university, said that it would enable them to suggest measures to address the present environmental problems.
He said that it would enable them to suggest measures to environmental problems, especially in relation to Goals one and four of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
According to him, the Goals one and four talk about quality education as well as clean water and sanitation respectively.
Idris said that the intensive field investigation would expose the students to practical techniques in geographical/environmental studies and finding solutions to environmental problems.
The theme of the three-day field trip is “Environmental Sustainability in the Federal Capital Territory and its Environs.
No fewer than 249 postgraduate students of the department participated in the field trip.