Don blames lack of potable water on inability to implement laws, policies

 Prof. Josiah Babatola of the Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA) has blamed inability of government to execute its policies and decision as a major cause of inadequate potable water. Babatola stated this in the 126th series of inaugural lecture of FUTA on Tuesday in Akure.

The inaugural lecture was titled; “Water, Man and Environment: the three Inseparable Partners.” Babatola is a professor of Water Resources and Environmental Engineering in FUTA.

The professor said: “Our problem in Nigeria is that we always have good policies but to follow them up is a problem.

“The problem of water in Nigeria is that there is no continuity in the policies that have been put in place.

“What we can do is to continue to educate the people and the policy-makers because they just make policies and will not care if they don’t executive them.

“But they should know that they have service to render to people which is giving them water.

“Water is essential to human existence and we have adequate water, but to bring it to people is our problem,” he said.

Babatola said that it was imperative for people to support the environment they lived on, saying no matter what, the environment would live on.

According to him, human impacts the natural habitat in so many ways and there is need to be aware of personal environmental input. The don added that researchers in Nigeria should embark on serious interdisciplinary, need-driven researches in all areas bearing in mind the impacts the output of these researchers would have on the environment.

He advocated that all existing government policies and laws dealing with environmental and water protection be re-egernised and enforced. Babatola noted that human factors and errors could be directly related to environmental impacts.

“This is because the current rate of both solid and waste water generation; if not properly controlled can put our environment in serious future problems.

“The current rate of unplanned and arbitrary urbanisation in our country is causing a lot of damage to our forest and other natural resources.

“It is, therefore, recommended that government takes urgent actions to stop and correct this anomaly because of the future of the coming generation.

“Mother Nature is an unrelenting and unforgiving force, so, it is probably best if we treat her well, and maybe, just maybe we can make up for the damage that has already been dealt with.

“The best time to act, was yesterday, the best we can do is today, but if we wait for tomorrow, it may just be too late. Society needs to help itself in order to survive,” he explained.