Environmental pollution is no longer an invisible threat in Nigeria; it has become a national sickness spreading faster than our systems can manage. The alarm grew louder when LASEPA’s Director-General, Babatunde Ajayi, revealed that pollution now accounts for roughly 25% of all hospital-reported diseases in Lagos State. This statistic mirrors what is quietly unfolding across the entire country. When one state cries, the others are merely whispering the same pain.
From the choking smog hovering over Port Harcourt’s skies to the oil-stained creeks of the Niger Delta, and from the refuse-choked canals of Lagos to the burning dumps in Kogi, the story is the same: Nigeria is inhaling danger. The air is no longer clean; the water is no longer pure; the earth is no longer safe. In many communities, children cough before they learn to speak, and adults battle illnesses they cannot trace to genetics but to the very environment suffocating them.
This crisis did not appear overnight. It has been gathering like a dark cloud, fed by unchecked industrial emissions, reckless waste disposal, flaring gas that never sleeps, and the national obsession with short-term survival over long-term health. Nigeria has become a place where factories operate like they owe the environment nothing and where citizens burn refuse because the system burns no guilt. The result is predictable: hospitals are treating the symptoms of a polluted nation instead of the roots of its sickness.
Yet, what makes this tragedy heavier is the silence that follows it. Environmental pollution is not dramatic like a bomb blast, not loud like a protest, not viral like a political scandal. It kills slowly; one poisoned breath, one contaminated sip, one toxic rainfall at a time. It is the kind of danger that creeps into lungs quietly and settles into bloodstream without permission. And because it is slow, it is ignored. Because it is invisible, it is underestimated. But the hospitals are not silent; they are reporting the damage every day.
If Nigeria is serious about nation-building, then cleaning the land should be as important as fixing the economy. A sick environment produces a sick people, and a sick people cannot build a great nation. The government must act, industries must be held accountable, and citizens must embrace cleaner habits. For when the air becomes a threat and the water becomes a warning, the nation is no longer living but only surviving. And survival is not the destiny of a country that calls itself the Giant of Africa.
– Inah Boniface Ocholi writes from Ayah – Igalamela/Odolu LGA, Kogi state.
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