The Ogun State government has warned residents against dumping the bodies of babies and faeces in public waste bins placed along major roads in the state.
The Commissioner for Environment, Ola Oresanya, gave the warning while speaking with newsmen in Abeokuta, the state capital.
Oresanya lamented that residents of Abeokuta had been abusing public waste bins by dumping dead babies and faeces in them.
He said the government was making plans to secure the Panseke pedestrian bridge in Abeokuta from beggars, robbers and destitute who had taken over the bridge.
Oresanya said the bins placed along the road leading to the Panseke market and around the area where okada riders stay were constantly being filled with faeces and dead babies.
“When their children die, they don’t bury them, they will just dump them in the bins. There is a major social problem in that area that needs special attention and we are looking at it holistically,” Oresanya said.
He said the Panseke pedestrian bridge was originally constructed for pedestrians to use, but it was now being misused by people who sleep and defecate on it.
Oresanya said the government was working on ways to make the bridge accessible to people with disabilities and to stop destitute from using it at night.
“We have to put gates there to stop the destitute from sleeping on the bridge in the night and defecating on it because what we heard is that people can’t use that bridge at night and the destitute that stay there, they rob people, sleep and defecate there. So, they have to be locking that bridge around 6 pm to stop destitute in the night,” he said.
