By GARBA MUHAMMAD, Kaduna

A Senior Lecturer in the Department of Microbiology, Kaduna State University (KASU), Ja’afar Isah Abdullahi, has advocated for stoppage of production of plastics to save the environment from further avoidable disasters such as flood.

According to him, the country could come up with the idea of recycling of the existing plastics which could serve and last for hundreds of years and at the same time, generate employment for young persons and improved internally generated revenue for the government.

Presenting a paper titled, “Effects of climate change in the distribution of diseases” during a one-day training for Kaduna journalists on science reporting organised by Climate Change Reporters in collaboration with Motherhood Foundation and Gusau Institute, Abdullahi noted that, climate change is bringing about new diseases, causing dangerous organisms to spread to new places.

“Let the world stop production of new plastics while we recycle the ones we already have in place. Apart from saving lives, it will be an avenue to create jobs for unemployed youths and in turn, it will keep them busy thereby reducing social vices,” he said.

According to Abdullahi, plastic end products such as water bottle, water sachet, polythene, etc, which end up in drainages were partly responsible for floods and diseases across the country.

He said, floods provide more breeding grounds for mosquitoes and other vectors which means indirectly, greenhouse distributes diseases.

“First, we must admit that climate change is everyone’s problem. No agency, government or scientist can fix it for us and that is where the media come in. We are all in this together. Our lifestyle towards the environment must change,” he added.

Earlier in a remark, Chairman, Correspondent Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Kaduna, Halilu Asma’u Yawo, thanked the organisers for the training.

“We are grateful for the opportunity given to our members to update their knowledge with regards to science reporting which has its technical way of reporting for both the scientific and none scientific members of the society,” she said.

Director, African Climate Reporters and Chairman of the occasion, Nurudeen Bello, appreciated the level of responses from journalists.

He expressed hope that journalists will keep the tempo so that they can be imbued with science especially on climate change.