The National Assembly and the Federal Ministry of the Environment are putting finishing touches to a bill meant to prohibit the production of plastics, which pollute the environment.
A member of the Senate Committee on Marine Transport, Senator Tolulope Odebiyi, disclosed this in Lagos at the launch of the Maritime Action Plan for Marine Litter and Plastics Management in Nigeria.
Odebiyi, the drafter of the proposed bill, who represented the Chairman of the committee, Senator Danjuma Goje, said the bill would be harmonised with input from the Federal Ministry of the Environment to make a holistic law that would impose tough sanctions on the production of organic polymers.
Odebiyi stressed that the National Assembly was solidly behind the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency in the presentation and implementation of the action plan, which envisions the elimination of land-based sources of marine litter within five years.
The Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on the Environment, Hon. Johnson Oghuma, also stressed the lower chamber’s commitment to a cleaner environment.
Oghuma said the House was always prepared to assist the executive in the implementation of government policies.
The Director-General of NIMASA, Dr. Dakuku Peterside, lamented that Nigeria was among the 20 countries generating more than 80 per cent of the land-based plastic wastes that end up in the oceans.
Dakuku said the event was organised to raise public awareness about the deleterious effects of marine pollution and chart a national roadmap on solution to the menace.
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