My achievements in BASEPA product of dedication to duty, govt support – DG.

By Kaka Mohammed Misau.

The Director General of the Bauchi state Environmental Protection Agency (BASEPA), Dr Ibrahim Kabir has attributed his numerous achievement in the agency to dedication and sincerity to work.

Dr Kabir was before his appointment by Governor Bala Mohammed as the DG of the Agency, a lecturer with the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University.

“In fact after my appointment, His Excellency gave me an ultimatum that in one month he wants to see my impact in Bauchi as far as issues of environmental management is concerned”, he said.

The DG noted to ensure that he has made impact, he declared a state of emergency regarding the issue of waste management which has been a lingering for decades in Bauchi.

“Before now, wherever you go, you find waste everywhere, but we were able to succeed by applying some simple strategies. When we came in, we realized that there were so many unsuitable collection centres within Bauchi metropolis where people just go and dump their garbage which are not supposed to be there”, the DG decried.

Kabir said that the management of BASEPA under his supervision decided to cancel some of the unsuitable collection centres particularly in organized areas like GRA and estates.

He said that the decision to cancel those unsuitable collection centres was meant to reduce the areas where wastes were dumped for evacuated.

The DG noted that 27 out of the 56 collection centres that were marked for cancellation have been cancelled, adding that the performance of the agency is now visible to everyone in the state.

“So, by doing that, now everybody is seeing our performance and our efficiency has increased a little bit and most of the places that before now, when you go there you will see wastes, the wastes are no more there, in fact, we have started converting some of the areas that we have cleared and cancelled them now to a green areas in the metropolis”, Dr Kabir explained.

He said some of the cancelled collection centres such as Fadaman Mada behind government girls secondary school, Sir Kashim road and behind fire service are now being converted to green areas.

According to him, “the agency has started planting trees, particularly economic trees, at least we are converting the collection centre to a green area”.

He said that many other places that have been cancelled are also in the process of been converted to green area.

“So, the rationale behind our performance is just about sincerity of purpose, it is just about taking your job with all seriousness, we are not here to joke, we are here to work”, Dr Kabir explained.

He said that his efforts has turned the office of the DG of the Agency to a field work going by the modality of his operations, adding any DG coming after him will find it difficult to cope with if he or she doesn’t toe the same path.

“I don’t think he can handle this kind of responsibility, it is no more administrative, it is a field work because I am a field worker even before I came here, so I also convert the seat to be a field work position”, the DG said.

“You know, as I have been saying, BASEPA virtually has everything, we have our mechanics here that work with us and we pay them salaries every month, in fact we have everybody, we have masons, we have tiling personnel, everything that you need, BASEPA has it”, Dr Kabir noted.

The DG who gave the staff strength of the Agency as more than six hundred added that BASEPA has area offices in bout seven local governments.

He said that the Agency has adopted a strategy that assisted in the general overhauling all its trucks by domesticating activities within the agency.

“We used our internal mechanics under direct labour and at the same time we try to watch over them as they are working. We have been saying it, there are so many submissions to the government on the need to repair some of the trucks in BASEPA, we asked for a little amount of money and they gave us”, the DG further explained.

The DG who recalled that governor Bala Mohammed recently commissioned a laboratory which was solely built by BASEPA said that the funds were sourced from the decontamination exercise carried out on schools in the state.

“Our schools, as part of the protocols of curbing corona virus pandemic, before opening of schools there was a directive by the government for the decontamination of over seven thousand schools in the state, we collected a minimum of five thousand naira in each school”, he said.

Dr Kabir who said that the laboratory which has four offices, the laboratory itself and three toilets, further explained that the lab equipment were there since 2007 without been used.

“Its only some schools around whether within the state or neighbouring states that use to hire them to secure accreditation. But when I came on board, I decided to make use of them by building the laboratory”, Dr Kabir noted.

“And for these two trucks, we just collected only two million naira from the government to repair them. They have been repaired under my supervision and put to used. It was done by the mechanics within the agency. So many people are saying that we have acquired new trucks not knowing that its the old ones that we repaired”, the agency’s DG disclosed.

He added that, ” some of the trucks were marked for auctioning, but when I came, I removed the tag and say we don’t need to auction any of them because they can be serviced and put to usage, and now we are making use of them and getting the required results”.

The DG said in order to decentralize the agency’s operations, he has at inception visited seven area offices and interacted with them.

He said that “whatever we are doing at the state capital is just like we are creating a prototype, we are piloting and when we see that the framework that we designed is working we always take it to the area offices”.

The who DG disclosed that the agency has gotten an approval to open offices across the 20 local government areas of the state, said however that the only challenge is that each local government has its different problem when it comes to environmental issues.

“We realized that the 20 local government areas we have, they have their own different peculiarities. When you go to Zaki local government area, the environmental issues down there are different from that of Alkaleri local government, when you go to Darazo, you know their environment is entirely different from that of Bogoro”, he said.

“What we are doing now is that we are identifying these environmental problems because we have a lot activities in BASEPA. So, the environmental problems that you are going to get in Zaki will be different from that of Alkaleri local government”, the DG added.

Dr Kabir said that the agency is going to focus solely on environmental issues in the local governments by looking at which of its activities is relevant to environmental situations of the various local governments.

“So, we are hoping that from now to first quota of next year we are going to have our 20 local government offices, we have already started interacting with the local government chairmen and they are willing to support us, they promised us of their support in the area of office accommodation, logistics and others”, Dr Kabir explained.

He appreciated Governor Bala Mohammed for giving him the mandate to pilot the affairs of the Agency as well as the maximum support being given to it