Don urges Nigerians to shun environmental abuse
A Professor of Development Studies at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Onyenekenwa Eneh, has urged Nigerians to quit attitudes that degrade life and environment to protect human lives.
Eneh made the call during an Inaugural Lecture titled: “Taking Life to Higher Level of Development: Quitting the Abuse of Life and Environment that Support Life”, organised by the University of Nigeria Nsukka, Enugu campus.
He said that the environment that supports life should be preserved and not be abused and destroyed through abusive, unhealthy and anti-development habits and actions.
The don explained that the lecture was about improving the living standard of man through imbibing and practicalising actions that promote human lives and protect the ecosystem.
According to him, to achieve the feat, Nigerians and governments at every level should quit abusive emotions, and weapons of mass destruction that degrade life and the environment.
“There is the need to harp on these habits and actions and man should quit them if life must be taken to higher level of development” he said.
“To achieve this, the attitude of people to life and environment must change and Nigerians should appreciate life and system that support it”
“These actions that impact lifespan are mostly found in nutrition, stress and addiction as well as emotion,” he said.
On nutrition, Eneh said the unrealised dangers to good living come from common habits and practices of poor meal planning, too many eating outs and processed junk-foods.
Other attitudes included excessive taking of sugar, mindless eating, lone eating habit, eating on the run and eating giant-sized portions, adding that these actions cut life by reducing the expectancy .
“As life support system, environment is indispensable to life and as such, man ought to preserve and conserve it” he added.
“Contrarily, human activities such as bush burning, tree felling, noise pollution, quarrying, mining, sand winning, use of fossil fuel, open defecation, armament and weaponry of mass destruction degrade life.
“Government should provide and maintain infrastructure to make life meaningful and forestall abuse of life and environment that supports life,” he added.
Earlier in his opening remarks , the Vice-Chancellor of the University, Prof. Charles Igwe, represented by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Daniel Nwachukwu, said lecture was educative and expository.
He described Eneh as a dual intellectual who combined Chemistry and Development Studies and excelled in both.
The V-C urged the audience to listen as the lecture proved beyond doubt why the university made him a professor, stressing that the students would boost their intellectual horizon .
