Our cities, even new ones like Abuja, are planned and built as though stones and not human beings with human needs, will inhabit them. Motor parks, markets, public squares and greens are planned and executed as though they exist in isolation of their prospective users.
In many of these places you cannot find access roads, water supply, fire service centres, first aid and police posts and emergency evacuation units.
Contrarily you may find feeding centres and kiosks and other dispensers of refreshments and nourishment. But hardly can you find in many of the nation's public places decent, functioning toilets for users to relieve themselves.
For this, Nigerians suffer the undignified sight of citizens urinating and defecating in open spaces to the embarrassment of onlookers, foreign and local.
No sight or sign is as defining of a people's level of being as that of sane, adult Nigerians openly answering the call of nature without qualms or embarrassment. This is a daily occurrence in all major city centres in the North and South of the country. It has become a culture which colours all our national achievements in the arts, sciences, sport and scholarship in the eyes of the world that Nigeria has strained to positively impress. No one takes anyone with disgusting personal hygiene seriously as civilized beings.
And until planners take the issue of an acceptable personal hygiene seriously, not much can be done in changing the global perception of Nigeria as a nation of brutes.
That is why the recently announced intention of the Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB) to establish 100 mobile toilets in all districts of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) would appear as a step in the right direction.
Much as we applaud the move by Hadjya Hadiza Abdullahi who directs the AEPB, it has to be noted that it is too late in the day for the FCT to be lacking of mobile toilets for that great city.
It is even more disheartening for the FCT to be contemplating an addition of 11 permanent public conveniences under a nebulous public-private partnership arrangement.
For one thing, the indiscriminate defecation in Abuja is said to be most rampant in markets and motor garages in all districts of the FCT. Whether planned or not, relevant FCT municipalities authorised the parks and markets, collected, and still collect, rental fees from operators of these public places. Why cannot the municipalities construct toilets and other human conveniences in return?
This may be demanding too much from those who run our cities. But matters are not better with private builders of residential and commercial buildings who still view the provision of toilets and other waste collection and disposal outlets as luxuries for tenants. Most office buildings have no public/visitor's convenience. Those that are grudgingly provided are appropriated and locked up by officials as status symbols.
The Abuja EPB example may be the way to go for all city planners in the country but it may also be flawed in that permanent residents of cities do not need temporary, but permanent public conveniences as long as the places are open to human use.
In most of the commercialized corners of our major cities where residential buildings have transformed into shops and plazas, Nigerians still suffer the indignity of begging, bribing or paying to relieve themselves, or are compelled to do so in the open streets.
A nation that provides for eating, drinking and production without a thought to the logical waste by-products of its national consumption is a sorry nation indeed.
All organism that ingest and digest food and nourishment must naturally eject the waste products. Even among animals, there is a natural order to waste generation and disposal, which tends to cast doubt over the human naturalness of the Nigerian.
To correct this unflattering national attribute, existing city planning laws must be enforced and where defective, amended and up-graded.
City planning officials that approve of markets and parks without insisting on public conveniences, safety and security out-post must be sanctioned along with contravening operators, developers and builders.
When there are no facilities for such natural, biological activity as defecating and urinating, citizens will do so anywhere and anyhow.
The beginning of environmental sanity will be to ensure that existing planning rules are obeyed and contraveners sanctioned. This is not a matter of who operates the system but that of ensuring that human, natural needs of citizens are respected in national plans.
What goes on in Abuja will be of interest for city planners in other parts of the country. The management of our human and industrial wastes is not a question of who, but of 'how' and 'what' is being managed.
A nation without toilets is a bizarre, unnatural, dysfunctional and, ultimately, non-sustainable entity. The sooner society acknowledged this reality, the better for the nation's waste generation, collection and disposal management. Not on empty, cynical and inchoate proclamations and announcements.
Daily Champion