I grew up in a little village in Imo and as children we woke up and went to the village pond to fetch water for domestic use before going to school.
The school, St. Charles Primary School, Enyiogugu in Aboh-Mbaise Local Government Area, is located one and a half kilometres away from the village square.
It had children from the nine villages that make up the community as pupils and they had easy access to it no matter the season.
Today, access to the school founded by Catholic missionaries in the 1940s is hindered and school children stay away from classes more than half of the year as flood water takes over the school environment during the rains.
Flood has also taken over the road on which the school is located. Villagers cannot access their homes and often wade through bush tracks on foot or travel up to eight kilometres by modern vehicles to get in or out.
Consequently, natives who do not live at home do not return until the dry season but not without bumping through gullies dug on the road during the rainy season.
The school field which serves as recreation ground for pupils and youths in the community is flooded and out of use for most part of the year and can only serve the purpose toward the end of the year when the dry season sets in.
The current situation has arisen because those on whose farmlands the ponds were dug have encroached on them and erected modern buildings, also threatened by erosion.
Others blocked water channels along the road with modern structures which they cannot access as well.
Also, the culture of young people maintaining community roads and other infrastructure, such as ponds, has died.
Time was when youths in the community cleared paths and filled gullies regularly to ensure they were used all year-round.
In fact, every market day was used to clear the paths leading to the market and defaulting youths were punished by their peers.
They also cleaned the ponds during the dry season to ensure they were safe for use the following year and in addition retain water during the rainy season for use in the dry period of the year.
Neighbouring communities to the village also collaborated in maintaining roads connecting them by engaging their youths.
The culture has died partly because there are few young people at home but more because of the lack of cooperation among the people who look at communal life with contempt.
The case here is similar to experiences in many Nigerian communities where modernity is eroding community life, coupled with poor leadership at the grassroots.
In some communities in the past, individuals never made preferences as to where to build but obtained authorisation of the community leadership to do so.
The reason was both for the safety of the individual and community as well as to ensure that places meant to serve certain needs, such as farming, were not put to other uses.
Not so now that anyone with means can choose a spot to develop so long as it suits his/her fancy.
In 2012, flood ravaged 30 states in Nigeria, killed 392 persons as well as animals and destroyed property, which value is not certain, according to National Emergency Management Agency.
In the current year, Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency has declared 12 states on the Niger and Benue troughs disaster areas in terms of flooding.
Already, some persons have been confirmed dead in some areas while the emergency services battle to offer relief to flood disaster victims.
Overtime, authorities warn citizens against blocking drains to avoid flooding, but such advice is not heeded as people, especially in cities, dump refuse into running water whenever it rains.
Such persons store domestic waste and wait for the day it would rain to dump them in running water to flow into drains.
This attitude, though deriving from poor hygiene habits, is encouraged by the lack of facilities for waste disposal and management.
The Gen. Muhammadu Buhari military regime of 1983 to 1985 set aside the last Saturday of every month as National Environmental Sanitation Day in its War Against Indiscipline (WAI) campaign.
During the sanitation period, which held from 7a.m. to 10a.m., there was a ban on the movement of persons and vehicles nationwide.
The campaign, carried over by successor military regimes through law enforcement, recorded some success as people used the opportunity to clean their surroundings and coordinate how to manage their communities, including addressing issues of security in the community in its early days.
Interest, however, faded with time and the people used the allotted period to rest, mainly because the authorities responsible for properly disposing waste allowed them to deface the streets many days after collection.
The day also turned out to be opportunity for organising social events, such as marriages and burials.
Many described the time allotted for the exercise as wasted, violation of human rights and called for it to be scrapped.
With the return of civil rule in 1999 the exercise was scrapped and since then, the people have returned to old habits and no serious attention is paid to environmental cleanliness.
At the institutional level, structures such as WAI Brigade, which the Buhari regime set up to enforce compliance, have been scrapped.
Sanitary inspectors, used in the past to regulate sanitation in communities, are no longer available.
Also, the local government system, constitutionally responsible for environmental sanitation, has collapsed as state governors have incapacitated the councils by denying them funds for operation.
Because of the absence of an effective local government system, labourers who hitherto maintained local roads no longer exist, but in the midst of all these, the people still look up to the government to respond to their situation.
Because the people regard the government as the ultimate provider, they have abandoned community life of self-help and resist attempts by any form of authority to get them to work for themselves.
The gradual disappearance of communal help has been further heightened by the politicisation of traditional institutions, whereby persons with poor understanding of community life are appointed by state governors to achieve selfish political ends.
As a result, there is a high level of mistrust between traditional rulers and their subjects, which often leads to unending litigation, disrespect and disloyalty for the occupant of the office of the traditional ruler by segments of the community.
In the midst of the confusion, communities no longer care about what happens around them and selfish individuals exploit the opportunity to inflict harm on the people by appropriating the common wealth.
In the city, few participate in the activities of neighbourhood associations and others contest decisions of persons chosen to bring order to the environment.
Against all these, will it not be right to look back and restore time-tested values that helped the environment to survive? It may not remedy all the damage done, but can help shape the future. (NANFeatures)
