Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo on Friday in Ibadan inaugurated a New Solid Waste Management architecture for the state.
News Agency of Nigeria(NAN) reports that the programme tagged “Clean and Green Initiative,” was put together by the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources in conjunction with the Oyo State Waste Management Authority.
Makinde in his speech at the occasion posited that cleanliness of the state should be a collective responsibility that must not be left in the hands of government alone.
He said that the Clean and Green Initiative would empower many people in the state.
He added that it would be replicated in all the nooks and crannies in order to make Oyo state one of the cleanest in Nigeria within a short time.
The governor, therefore charged all the relevant stakeholders to collaborate with the state government in its bid to make the state more habitable.
He further disclosed that government would soon sponsor the Commissioner of Environment and some top government officials to Kigali, Rwanda, “which is reputed as the cleanest city in Africa, to understudy its solid waste management architecture so as to replicate same in Oyo state.”
He said his administration believed that cleanliness was next to godliness hence it accepted that the task ahead, “when it came to waste management, is a daunting one.
“We were well aware of the difficulties ahead even before we came in. So, in our roadmap to the accelerated development of Oyo state from 2019-2023, one of the sectors we highlighted outside of the four pillars was waste management.
“With that robust plan, there won’t be illegal disposing of waste but keeping the streets clean,” he said.
Makinde maintained that the government realised that the responsibility of waste management was too strategic to be left in the hands of only the government.
He therefore called on critical stakeholders to collaborate with the government on the new waste management architecture in order to achieve the desired result of a cleaner Oyo state.
[NAN]
Vanguard News Nigeria.