5th March, 2012
The Lagos State Environmental Protection Agency, LASEPA, has urged the State House of Assembly to enact a law to stop indiscriminate slaughtering of animals in the state.
The General Manager, LASEPA, Rasheed Shabi led a team on an inspection of environmental degradation at the abattoir, Agege, Lagos, Southwest Nigeria at the weekend.
Shabi said enacting a law by the Assembly became imperative because people now even slaughter animals in their homes, saying such should be restricted to the abattoir alone.
“ I am going to write a letter to Governor Babataunde Fashola and also to my ministry stating the need for us to have this law in place.
“There is need to use the abattoir in this state. We cannot allow people to slaughter cows just anywhere or in their houses because they will be putting the waste from the animal into the public drains and by the time this gets to the drains, it will silt and thereby degrade the environment.”
He urged the Management of Harmony, in charge of the Oko-Oba abattoir to check the environmental challenge in the area.
“We have discussed with the management of the abattoir and they claimed that the plant used to treat the waste for the animals is not working, and I advised them to do something about it urgently because we are not going to fold our hands and allow this to continue.
“They also complained about lack of patronage because the abattoir has the capacity to slaughter about 2000 animals daily but hardly do they get 25 cows to slaughter a week,” he stated.
The LASEPA boss said something urgent must be done to sanitise the slaughtering of animals in the state so that the butchers would not run at a loss.
By Kazeem Ugbodaga