By Bisola Adeyemo
There was sharp disagreement yesterday among senators, Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Ministry of Environment and other major stakeholders in the water sector at the Senate.
The disagreement came up during a public hearing by the Senate on a bill seeking to establish a Clean Nigeria Agency to help tackle the menace of open defecation in the country so as to meet the 2025 open defecation free target.
The proposed legislation, titled “A Bill for an Act to establish Clean Nigeria Agency (Establishment) Bill, 2021,” is sponsored by Senator Clifford Ordia, PDP, Edo Central.
Ordia, in his presentation, said the bill sought to make rules, issue guidelines and regulations for the construction and operations of public toilets.
He said the agency, when established, would certify public toilet facilities to be fit for use by members of the public and have powers to shut down public places not meeting the required standards prescribed by the agency.
However, speaking against the proposed agency, the director of legal services in the Ministry of Environment, Helen Obayagbon, argued that the bill was trying to convert a fragment of the waste management component of sanitation into an agency, adding there are 15 components of sanitation.
This, she noted, would result in wasting public resources, stressing that the ministry has the mandate to coordinate environmental sanitation activities in all sectors of Nigeria.
She noted that the ministry and its agencies were neither informed nor consulted on the proposed agency.
The president of the Environmental Health Officers Association of Nigeria (EHOAN), Jamilu Shuaibu, explained that the bill was inconsistent with the Fourth Schedule of the 1999 constitution as amended.
NAN