By Polycarp Onwubiko
The Anambra Broadcasting Service (ABS) news recently urging landlords in Onitsha to embark on the uplifting their premises pertaining to proper channeling dirty water from bathroom and kitchen into the sewage is highly commendable.
Many compounds have bathroom and kitchen waste water emptying into the public gutters constituting effluvium with horrible stench.
There is no doubt that most of the diseases emanated from the effluvium which are supposed to be channelled into the sewage to ensure proper hygienic environment. What is funny about the policy is that landlords should commence repainting the houses and the most beautiful ones and ‘first’ to do that will have prices awards from the government.
This is where people may kick against because landlords will task tenants to contribute money for the repainting of the houses. In this crushing economic situation in Nigeria where many households barely eat twice in a day, fighting between landlords and tenants will not be ruled out because of smouldering discontent and frustrating instances in the course of going about fending for the families needs, school fees, and a plethora of necessary expenditures while the means to do that are not there.
Government policy usually needs feedback from the people for a review. It is therefore pertinent to appeal to the state government to backpedal on the issue of requesting landlords in Onitsha to embark on repainting their premises to enable Anambra State to shine.
What is very urgent now is to reinvent the situation of township streets in the First Republic which were tarred and pipe-born water in every premises and public taps on every street running twenty-four hours even in the semi-urban areas as was done before the Nigeria-Biafra war. When this basic amenities is actualized, then we see how the leadership of the country has raised the economic profile and elevated standard of living of the masses, then, money will be in the hands of landlords and they will be in the financial position to repaint their houses to “shine” Anambra State. But for now, please don’t ignite war between landlords and tenants both of whom are frustrated and exasperated on the devastating economic situation in Nigeria heading to the Stoney Golgotha.
By Polycarp Onwubiko, public policy analyst.
