By Felix Kuyinu
A group, F.A.B.E International Foundation, has admonished users of Ketu Fruit Market in Lagos to imbibe the nature of cleanliness as part of their daily activities.
The Non Governmental Organization, in partnership with the Lagos Waste Management Authority, LAWMA, and Prudential Zenith also held a cleaning exercise during a visit at the market on Friday.
At the event tagged:“ProjectCleanAir”, Founder of the Foundation, Temitope Okunu, stated that creating awareness on proper cleaning and hygiene led to conducting the initiative.
Okunnu emphasized on how waste from fruits can be converted into biogas which can in turn generate electricity for the market.
She said: “We want to sensitize the market people where the source of fruit is so that they can become advocates for change themselves.
“We know that fruit waste can actually generate biogas and compost, waste can actually generate biogas and carbon, and here in the Ketu market, we have a biogas digester, and it has not been harnessed.
“So, we want a situation whereby the market people themselves begin to segregate their waste into the kind of waste that can actually feed into the bio-digester and then you can produce electricity for them.”
Assistant General Manager of LAWMA, Ajayi Abimbola, at the event, affirmed that the state government remains resolute in ensuring that waste generated from markets are converted into biogas.
Abimbola said: “LAWMA is an agency under Lagos state that needs partnership with other NGOs to also survive and we have enough resources for us to showcase what we need now going forward particularly in this Ikosi-Ketu fruit market.
“We have waste maintained in our society meaning that there is a need to divide organic waste from the land feed and to do that is to provide enabled environment so we convert this organic waste to resource material and one of them is biogas, biogas is the aerobic direction whereby we produce methane and we produce bio energy for fertilizer.
“LAWMA is keen on developmental process of biogas. We have made monumental progress and we assure that the project will be launched in coming months.
“So far, all the preliminary work, the baseline study has been done, the next phase is to do the business model to showcase that we have enough methane that we produce from this market.
“Presently, we are considering the biogas to be effective from next year, June. By June, we should be able to produce electricity for the market, we have a power fertilizer for them, we are still having a central kitchen for them to showcase that the raw material obtained from this market can be converted to the material we are looking at.”
The Chief Strategy and Transformation officer of Prudential Zenith Life Insurance, Cherise Ige, hinted on the significance of partnering with the state’s agencies to provide a healthy living for the state’s residents.
Ige mentioned that residents are heavily stressed with work and daily hustle, but breathing in good air helps reduce human stress levels.
She said:“We need to watch our emissions; we need to do things proactively like clean up our areas that we live in so as to encourage better air quality and atmosphere.
“Simple things that we can do are planting new trees so that we are able to breathe better oxygen and better air quality basically.”
The market users appreciated the visit by the visiting teams. Sola Olokungboye, Secretary of the market excos, promised significant increase in adherence to cleanliness measures at the market.