Good toilets vital to healthy living-ljebu Ode LG Boss

By Tope Oyekan

The Executive Chairman, Ijebu Ode Local Government, Alhaji Babatunde EMILOLA-GAZAL, has described good toilets as a sine qua non to healthy living. 

 The Chairman said this on Saturday, while on a sensitization campaign round Ijebu Ode metropolis, during the monthly environmental sanitation exercise. 

 The sensitization campaign forms part of the activities marking this year's World Environmental Health Day (WEHD), a day set aside by the International Federation of Environmental Health (IFEH), to raise awareness regarding the health of our environment. 

 The Chairman while speaking with reporters during the campaign, urged residents to always maintain a cleaner and healthier environment. 

He enjoined households without toilets to endeavour to have a good one, and also stop the habit of throwing human faeces in their surroundings and canals, which will eventually ends up in water level, and thus becomes injurious to water drilled from boreholes. 

 "A good toilet is a Síne Qua Non to a healthy living, and if you don't have one, you are inadvertently inviting epidemic to your households", said the Chairman. 

 "We all have a responsibility to ensure that our environment is clean at all times. We are all aware of cholera outbreak in some parts of the state, which the state government through the Ministry of Health, is doing everything to contain, and we do not pray that such spreads to our local government", the Chairman further said. 

 Saturday's sensitization campaign, according to Alhaji EMILOLA-GAZAL, was meant to educate and enlighten the people on the need for them to maintain a healthy living through a cleaner environment. 

 It also serves as a warning to those caught in the act of open defecation and other environmental nuisances, who ordinarily should have been arrested. 

 He said continuous engagement shall be maintained with the people to raise their environmental awareness, while enforcement shall follow. 

 The Chairman also advised people not to see the non-restriction of movement during the period as a cancellation of the exercise, but they should rather use it as an opportunity to clean their environment, and pack their wastes for proper evacuation. 

 He was accompanied on the campaign by the Senior Special Assistant to the Governor on Environment, Mr. Femi AKINWUNMI; Leader of the House, Ijebu Ode Local Government, Hon. Adeshola OGUNDARE; Director, Water Supply and Environmental Sanitation, Mrs. Bolanle DARE; and crew from the Information, Education and Sports Department of the local government.