The president of Child Health Environment and Safety Trust (CHEST), Professor Godson Ana, has said that a poor attitude towards the environment remains one of the major challenges facing the sector in Nigeria today.
Professor Ana said this while speaking during the fifth anniversary celebration of CHEST, held on the University of Ibadan, Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, earlier this week.
CHEST is a child-based non-governmental not-for-profit organisation with a vision to raise future leaders from a cleaner, safer and healthier world. The focus of CHEST includes child health advocacy, in-school environmental monitoring, environmental/safety training and education.
Professor Ana noted that children are God’s heritage and that they must be taught how to nurture the environment. “To be able to have a sustainable world, we need to nurture children on the things of the environment, to protect themselves, to ensure they are safe; otherwise we will not be bequeathing anything to them. So what kind of heritage would you have if you do not have children taking over from you? We need to bequeath these values to children and that’s one of the fundamental reasons CHEST was established.”
The president of CHEST noted that since the NGO began its operations five years ago, it has impacted several communities and individuals in and around the city of Ibadan. “The journey has been exciting and challenging. It has been a learning process and there are lots of prospects for the future.”
Speaking on the challenges, he lamented the poor attitude towards the environment by most people. “And that is what we have been trying to change. It has been very daunting. So we are trying to catch them young by going to schools with our environmental campaign.”
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Professor Ana also noted the poor government will and prioritization of environmental issues, low appropriation of funds and absence of infrastructure. “When we educate people not to litter or defecate openly, where are the facilities to cater for such? We teach people to wash their hands but we don’t have running water in public taps anymore,” he noted.
He also said that there is poor funding to execute some of the lofty ideas we have. He, however, said that CHEST was looking towards expanding its membership base, and partnering like-minded NGOs and individuals to build synergy in order to accomplish more in the New Year and beyond.
