Residents of Dada and other communities in Ilorin, Kwara State engage in indiscriminate dumping of refuse and open defecation due to the failure of the state government to provide dumpsters in public places and therefore live in perpetual fear of an epidemic outbreak, Abiodun JAMIU reports.

SOFT sunlight illuminates the dark corridor outside Iya Sikiru’s shop. With a plate and spoon in hand, she ladles three spoonfuls of rice into the plate.

Suddenly, she scowls, battling with flies so that they would not to perch on the plate of rice holds. Balancing the weather beaten plate on the wooden chair beside her, Iya Sikiru, as she is popularly known by motorists, began to lurch her hands side by side to drive the flies away.

“They are irritating (referring to the flies). There is no way you can chase them away,” she soliloquises.

Now facing the direction of this reporter, she adds, “they would still come back. This is what we deal with on a daily basis.”

“If not for God that is looking on us …” she coughed, unable to complete the statement.

Iya Sikiru, a food vendor, recounted the number of years she has spent at the popular Garaji Ondoko, a motor park at Dada Community in Ilorin, Kwara State.

But, aside the flies, she agonises even more about the indiscriminate dumping of refuse by residents of the area but like every other person, she hopes heaps of refuse that dot the community would be cleared soon to avert an impending epidemic.

“Garaji Ondoko is my second home. I have been in this garage for some years, selling ewa (beans). People come from different places to dump their refuses here including faeces,” she bemoans the unhygienic waste disposal habit of people of the community.

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