OKIRI C.: MENTAL SANITATION

I was Set for the journey back to Lagos, but I was stuck in Warri.
They were having an Environmental Sanitation Exercise. I wonder if these so called sanitation exercise enforced everylast Saturday of the month is having any significant effect on the minds of the people. Not as if the Warri folks are dirty literarily, they are neat in body and environment, as neat as the principles of hygiene goes. But the amount of psycho-social waste that goes on in that oil-tainted Sin City calls for a emergency measure.

In Lagos, though a Sin City too, the Lagos Waste Management Authority is doing its damnedest to clear the gutters, and streets of waste, but it is all they could do to take the city back from discarded "pure water" polythene packaging. But there remains the menace of destitutes, beggars, agberus, conductors and litter-bugs. But in Warri, you will think that, as in Lagos, the fight is against pure water poly-packaging, but no, the drainages are mostly clogged with used condoms, empty cans and bottles of liquor; and the streets littered with unkempt kids, brigands, and prostitutes.

The focus of sanitation, should be shifted from the environment to the mind. Environmental sanitation in any Sin City is a strife for mind over matter. One cannot shy from the looming truth that, if you change the Man you change his world, although a pig cannot be purified by ablution. Well, I wait for the window-dressing to be over so I may be on my merry way to the very Center of Excellence, Lagos.