Dr. Olusegun O. Dada is the Director, Department of Pollution Control and Environmental Health of the Ministry of Environment, Housing and Urban Development.

In this chat with our reporters, Nasidi Adamu Yahaya & Mohammed Haruna Yusuf, he stresses the need for environmental sustainability in the country through waste management and strict adherence to environmental regulations.

May we know the mandates of your department?Basically, the Department of Pollution Control handles issues of environmental pollution-air, noise; solid waste management, chemicals, electronic and sewage as well as industrial effluents. We develop policies, regulations and standards for the enforcement of the Agency i.e. National Environmental Standards and Regulations Agency [NESREA], to use for their own mandate.

We are also responsible for various chemical conventions: Rotterdam, Stockholm, Bamako and Basel conventions. We are in charge of the issue of Montreal Protocol, which seeks to phase out Ozone Depleting Substances [ODS] and the Vienna Convention.

The country, alongside others, has just marked the 2008 International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer. In your opinion, what human activities contribute to ozone layer depletion?

Well, as rightly stated, while commemorating the Day, developing countries contribute minimally to ozone depleting substances, but since we are in a global village, we also have to put in place measures to reduce the use of ODS.Nigeria, as a signatory to the Protocols and Conventions, has realised the dangers of the substances to the ozone layer and therefore, puts in place various measures to reduce its consumption by setting up the National Ozone Unit.

We increased the sensitisation right from the primary, secondary schools and then we seek cooperation with the press. This is because it is through the press that people will understand the dangers of these substances and thereby avoid using them. We conducted so many sensitisation workshops for journalists so that they help us disseminate appropriate information concerning the issue.

Now, as I suggested before, we are looking at the possibility of having press tours to all the environment-friendly facilities centres which we installed in order to reduce ODS consumption. This will guide you on how to report accurately the dangers of these substances.

And also, we are trying to lay a precedence by establishing what we call "Ozone Friendly Village".

The Federal Government is collaborating with Ogun state government to ensure zero consumption of ODS.They've given us the land and we are coaching various international donors to assist us to have a centre where we can train people on how to produce substances that will not deplete the ozone layer. We will put in place various environment friendly equipments/technology like used oil-we are planning to have in that facility.

Our target will go beyond ozone friendly substances. But we want to start with them and we will gradually move to other important areas. We want to have an idea where we can train artisans, and small scale industrialists on environment friendly technologies. That's the general concept we are looking at-it is a concept that is still on the drawing table but we hope in the next few years, we will put it together.

Similar things are also obtainable in places like China but we are doing it in our own way and we hope to have fruitful results.

Talking about environment -friendly facilities, I remember in June, you were in Lagos state to distribute some refrigerants that will help control ozone depletion. How far have you been able to use this process?

Well, what we were able to do, besides the second stage, is to see how those industries are utilising them. We are awaiting their feedback.We also must ensure that the equipments are being put to use and we also want to know if they are meeting up with our targets. We have not done that evaluation yet.

The minister has threatened to shut down companies that fail to comply with environment friendly guidelines in their operations. How do you intend to carry out this threat?

Actually, I cannot hold brief for the Minister or the Director of National Environmental Standards and Regulation Agency [NESREA] ,because they are mandated to carry out the enforcement ,but notwithstanding, it is part of the Environment Ministry to put in place a body that will ensure the enforcement especially in the industrial sector where regulations are being reviewed to meet with the present aspirations, policies and standards. Recently, they went to Japan and received training on how to improve their enforcement capacity. With this in place, I believe what the minister is saying is quite right. We have to read it carefully but not withstanding, the whole idea is not closing the industries but working with them to let them understand that there are alternatives and technologies they can use to treat their waste.

We held a consultative meeting in Umuahia last year whereby we got all the captains of industries together. The academia and regulators to discuss how to handle the effluents and discharges. We will be going to Kano state to do the same thing and hopefully, before the year runs out, we would be in Lagos state. We have captured the three major zones.

In as much as we are enforcing the standards, we are also meeting with them to let them understand what we have in place and the available technologies present. Do we do it on a Public Private Partnership as we are doing it with solid waste, or if they have enough resources to have centralised treatment facilities, those are measures that we are looking at.

We have this issue of healthcare waste and solid waste. What do you think can be done by government and policymakers to control this?

Constitutionally, issues of solid waste fall under the local governments, but that notwithstanding, they cannot handle this alone. So government, through the Ministry of Environment, has for many years put up measures and interventions into the issue. One of them is the Integrated Waste Management Facility which is a Public Private approach whereby the government will give a development fund of N250m to a willing investor who is able to put in three to seven billion depending on the size of the city. Years ago, we studied 15 cities in the country, Lagos, Kano, Kaduna, Port Harcourt, Yola, Maiduguri, Benin and Jos. All together, we have done preliminary studies to know the characterization and demographic studies of all those things.