The Concourse
Abraham Maslow on our roadsides: A Sequel
By Soney Antai, serial award-winning columnist
Penultimate week, this column discussed the avalanche of traders along the roadsides of Uyo, the Akwa Ibom State capital. We noted that they were ubiquitous at major intersections, byways and lay-bys across the city. Most deal in food items, sticking to this line of trade because they are themselves caught up in a race for survival.
These people, like their counterparts across Nigeria, are so buffeted by poverty that they are simply living from hand to mouth. They have so little in their pockets that they cannot save anything for the proverbial rainy day. Because they are unable to overcome the foundational needs of human existence — food, shelter and clothing — they can hardly think of moving into the other tiers of Maslow’s five-tier pyramid of needs. They simply cannot. It is like not having enough spittle to swallow but splashing the little you have on the hilt of a machete. It hardly makes sense.
Today, our concern is the unintended consequences of the phenomenon of roadside food trading, or what is better known around here as street trading. We tackle its health and physical-safety implications and then offer our recommendations.
The other day, I was taking a walk to my barber’s for a haircut. As I approached the Ifa Ikot Okpon intersection along Oron Road, I was both ashamed and surprised at the low civic-responsibility quotient of the food vendors doing business there.
In the gutter at the junction, I noticed a huge heap of Indomie, Maggi and other plastic wrappers. It was staggering, stunning and shameful. It appeared to have taken days, weeks, or a great number of traders to accumulate such a mountain of plastic debris. Expectedly, the gutter was blocked and could no longer convey water as it should.
Make no mistake about it: that is only one spot. There are many others around town. This column is of the view that such practices are one reason for the difficulty in controlling flooding in Uyo.
Those of us living here know that whenever it rains heavily, many internal roads and passageways suffer flooding. Granted, Uyo is a tableland, but the activities of these traders — and others who show little regard for environmental stewardship — make matters worse for residents and the geographical space they inhabit.
The average resident drops waste from moving vehicles, dumps refuse into gutters even when dumpsters are available, ignores designated waste-disposal points, and sweeps dirt into these water channels without a second thought. It is treated as the natural thing to do.
They simply do not care. And if anyone tries to draw their attention to the inappropriateness of such behaviour, they snap in anger, protesting what they regard as an intrusion into their business. It is that bad.
You must have noticed that at many intersections there are refuse dumps, some of which overflow and spill into the streets. There are even instances of open dumping, with people simply throwing their waste about.
Curiously, many food vendors set up their sales points only a few metres from these dump sites. They ignore the flies and the stench emanating from the waste. Sometimes, people are seen scavenging there, adding to and spreading the reach of the putrefaction.
As if these activities were not bad enough, customers still buy these food items — some of them, such as roasted chicken, pork, goat meat and suya, are not what decency and basic health awareness would allow rational beings to consume straight away without proper handling and hygienic preparation.
Let’s be clear: it is not just what we eat that matters, but also the quality and cleanliness of what we eat.
There is hunger in the land, and, for the first time in my living memory, we are witnessing a rising number of refuse-dump diners and entrepreneurs. But the solution we seek to hunger must not become a bigger problem than the hunger it was meant to solve. We must not create problems bigger and costlier than hunger itself, with avoidable health problems chief among them.
The Ministry of Health should rise to the occasion. Working with its Environment counterpart, it should enforce relevant laws to ensure that food items are not sold anywhere near garbage dumps, where rodents, cockroaches, vermin and other disease-carrying creatures hold sway.
Food such as the aforementioned meats should not be displayed openly. They must be kept in glass showcases or otherwise properly covered and protected from dust, flies and disease-causing microorganisms.
Beyond this, the quality of water used by traders to wash fruits and vegetables such as cucumbers, oranges and garden eggs should be examined regularly by health authorities.
We must not allow people to set up roadside fire points to fry akara, yam and plantain chips without some level of regulation.
Even the protective gear vendors wear while preparing and selling food should not be treated as though it does not matter. Government must also look into how the waste generated by these traders is collected and disposed of. Our people need a serious mindset reset regarding how they view these things.
Elsewhere, governments are turning waste into electricity and other economic value. Akwa Ibom State must begin to do the same. We should move beyond merely complaining about the avalanche of waste generated across the state every day and start asking how to convert that waste into wealth.
The roadside trader may be fighting to satisfy the first rung of Maslow’s pyramid. But in trying to survive, he must not unknowingly push the rest of society further down the pyramid through environmental degradation and preventable disease. Survival should not have to mean sacrificing public health.
