Growing up in Kaduna, pollution wasn’t just something I had heard about on the news it was always right in front of me, every single day, i remember seeing the gutters being always full of plastic and dirt after it had rained, those drains were meant to carry water away, but instead they turned into smelly and also stagnant pools because they were so much choked up with waste, Then as kids, we usually used to pinch our noses as we walked past those places ,but eventually, it became such a normal sight that many people have stopped caring.
Then during the dry season, everything was always dusty the kind of dust that would get stucked to your clothes, your skin, your eyes, even your throat. It always felt like you were breathing in tiny grains of dirt with every inhale you took, Then the rains would come, and you will think it would wash everything clean, but it only made things worse, the water will not even flow properly because the drains that are blocked, so the roads were always flooded, I remember wading through knee-high, muddy water just to get home from school, watching trash swim around me.
But one thing that really scares me about pollution is the air pollution, I think that it is the worst kind because you can not always see it, but you feel it in your lungs, In Kaduna, there’s so much burning of refuse. People light fires to get rid of waste because there’s no regular collection. The black smoke rises and mixes with the harmattan dust, and before you know it, you’re coughing for days. I remember days when my chest felt tight, and everyone just blamed it on weather instead of realising we were all breathing in poison.
It frustrates me how we’ve learned to adapt instead of fix the problem. We know the gutters are blocked but keep throwing things in. We burn trash because there’s no proper disposal system. It feels like the government isn’t doing enough, but honestly, we as individuals also need to change.
I think to end pollution, it has to be everyone’s job. Local authorities should provide bins in busy places and make sure waste is collected on time. There should be real consequences for dumping in drains. Schools need to teach kids not just that pollution is bad, but how their small actions add up. Imagine if everyone in Kaduna decided to stop dumping plastic in the drains how quickly things would change.
My hope is simple: I want a Kaduna where kids can walk home without wading through dirty floodwater. Where the air doesn’t make you cough. Where the gutters flow clean after rain. I know it’s possible. But it has to start with us deciding enough is enough.
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