Prof. Christian Madu, a Professor of Environmental Management and Control, has urged the Federal and state governments to strengthen all existing emission control laws to check air pollution.
Madu, who is of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), gave the advice in Enugu on Sunday.
He said that existing emission control laws should be tightened in terms of enforcement to check the growing air pollution coming from carbon-monoxide of imported fairly-used vehicles in the country.
According to him, air pollution remains one of the highest environmental pollutions, while transportation is the number one source of carbon-monoxide emission, leading to air pollution in the world, Nigeria inclusive.
“In most countries, there is strong emission control law, and most of these vehicles, especially commercial trucks, lorries and buses usually go for yearly or biannual inspection/test to check their emission levels.
“Any vehicle that fails the emission test would not be registered or given road worthiness certificate to ply the roads for the year.
“The vehicle will stay off the road until the fault in the vehicle that had led to the undesirable emission level is repaired and the vehicle retested for compliance. This is the standard world over,” he said.
Madu, who is a supervisor of lead researchers at the Centre for Environmental Management and Control, UNN, said that the government needed to strengthen laws meant to check carbon-monoxide emissions by being committed to removing smoky vehicles off the road.
He called for the opening up of vehicle emission testing centres nationwide.
The don called on governmental agencies meant to carry out the tests to ensure that dangerous carbon-monoxide emitting vehicles do not ply the road.
“It is regrettable that law enforcement agencies saddled with road safety do not stop or check these heavy smoke emitting vehicles due to concentration on extortion rather than on doing the job.
“You see a truck with heavy emissions that cover the road and drivers of other vehicles are blindfolded and do not to see clearly on the road; thus, at times leading to accidents as well,” he said.
