In an exclusive interview with the Daily News24, apart from planning legal frameworks to support and uphold a better environment in Kano, Dr Getso also plans to establish a mechanism whereby the thousands of tonnes of refuse generated in the state is turned into wealth.
Starting with his profile, this is what he has to say:
My name is Dr. Kabir Ibrahim Getso. I was born in Getso in Gwarzo Local Government Area of Kano state in the year 1975. I started my early education with the Qur’anic school, which is the tradition in most Hausa communities.
In the year 1980 I started my primary education at Yan’umawa Primary School which is one of the primary schools in Getso community. From there I proceeded to Unity College Karaye where I did my Junior Secondary School education. I had some time in Government Senior Secondary School Gwarzo, where I did part of my secondary education. Then in 1990 I proceeded to Science Secondary School Kafin Hausa where I finished my senior secondary school and graduated in 1992.
In 1993 I gained admission into Bayero University Kano where I studied Medicine and Surgery. I graduated from BUK in the year 2002, precisely in May 2002. You know it is mandatory for all graduates of medicine to go for one year housemanship. I did my Housemanship between 2002 and 2003 at Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital. Immediately after that I went for my NYSC (National Youth Service Corp) which is another mandatory exercise for all graduates so long as they are within the service age. I served in Rivers state precisely in a community called Agua Oduan, at Agua Oduan General Hospital between the years of 2003 and 2004.
On completion of my youth service I came back to Kano state where I joined the Ministry of Health under the Hospitals Management Board. There I started working as a Medical Officer. While I was working I secured admission into Residency Training at Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital. So I went for Residency in Community Medicine. While I was doing the residency program in 2011, I applied for Masters Programme in Ahmadu Bello University Zaria. It is actually a programme that is jointly run by the Centre for Disease Control, (CDC) Atlanta, Federal Ministry of Health, Frderal Ministry of Agriculture and the Universities of Ibadan and Ahmadu Bello. I chose to do my Masters under the stream in Ahmadu Bello University Zaria. It was a two years programme, so I graduated in 2013 with Masters in Public Health with specialty in Epidemiology.
It was immediately after I completed that programme that I was on the verge of continuing my residency programme when I got appointed as a commissioner for Health in 2015. His Excellency Dr Abdulahi Umar Ganduje ofr appointed me as Commissioner for Health in 2015. I was there for four years as the Commissioner for Health. After completing that tenure, in his second tenure Dr Abdulahi Umar Ganduje gave me another appointment, I was reappointed as the Commissioner for Environment. So that is what I a doing right now.
I have done some other works apart from the ones I have mentioned. For example I have worked with the Centre for Disease Control Atlanta at their office in Abuja where I worked as Field Coordinator, later as Zonal Coordinator.
I have attended a lot of conferences and workshops within and outside the country. I have also attended some Fellowships, for instance I have attended the HEPPA Fellowship which is organized by the Management Sciences for Health (MSH). Recently I attended the international program on Public Health Leadership, which is IPPHL, which is organized by the University of Washington in collaboration with Bill and Melinda Gate Foundation. I am also a member of the West African College of Physicians. I also have membership to some other organizations. I have been involved in a lot of researches locally and internationally and I have attended a lot of outbreak investigations. Being a field epidemiologist I was involved in so many outbreak investigations on Cholera outbreak, on Guinea worm, Lassa Fever, Meningitis outbreaks and have also investigated a lot of outbreak of Lead Poisoning and in Zamfara state in Niger state and some other outbreaks. This has taken me to so many parts of this country.
In a nutshell this is about me. My hobbies are reading, travelling and table tennis and I am married with children.
Talking on flood being the current tragedy affecting communities he discloses what the government is doing to resolve the problem:
Like you rightly mentioned this year we have seen unprecedented episodes of flooding, perhaps because of young age I have never witnessed flooding of this magnitude in my entire life. This flooding is global. It is not restricted to Kano, it is not restricted to Nigeria. It is a global phenomenon which is not restricted to developing countries. It has affected both developing and developed countries. We have seen it virtually everywhere. The major factor leading to this massive flooding as we are seeding on a global scale is the issue of climate change. This is an issue that has been discussed in so many fora and unfortunately there is poor understanding of this climate change issue. There are a lot of people that do not believe that there is anything called climate change. Unfortunately we are seeing a lot of negative consequences of climate change in our society today. We are seeing a lot of flooding, we are seeing change in pattern of diseases, we are seeing a lot of draught, we are seeing decrease in productivity in agriculture, and so many things. Even the patter of rainfall is changing. Before we used to see rainfall lasting for six months but now we see it last for four months, at most five months, and even the pattern is changing. You can see the torrential rainfall that we have seen this year. This climate change issue is a reality. We need to do a lot of public enlightenment, public education, public sensitization so that members of the public can fully understand what this climate change is and its impact on the environment.
Apart from climate change issue there are other factors that have contributed to the flooding that we have seen this year. There are the effects of our actions as human beings, the anthropogenic factors. For instance we have been felling trees and these trees are there to address climate factors. They absorb poisonous gasses and they emit oxygen into the air. They sort of purify the air that we breath. But through our actions, trees are being felled on daily bases and this has negative consequences on environment, not only climate change issues, it affects the environment, the integrity of the environment.
Trees have a lot of advantages on the environment. For instance they decrease the rate of flooding in the environment, they decrease or prevent desert encroachment, they decrease erosion in the environment and so many other functions. But despite these functions, human beings fell these trees.
Again the issue of indiscriminate dumping of refuse is another factor. This is what we are battling with day in day out. Indiscriminate dumping of refuse contributes to climate change because when the waste petrifies it emits what we call greenhouse gasses and these greenhouse gasses add to the problem of climate change that we are facing. Again, dumping of refuse indiscriminately leads to blockage of our waterways especially drainages. The refuse is washed by the rain and it gets into our drainage system, and sometimes the waste is even directly dumped into the drainage system and it blocks the drainages and compounds the problem of flooding problem that we have in our communities.
Again we have other factors, which is building structures, be they temporary or permanent on drainage lines. This impedes the free flow of water thereby aggravating flooding in our communities.
So these are some of the factors that have been associated with flooding in our society.
As a government, what we are doing in order to ensure that flooding is controlled and prevented in our society is that we are doing a lot to mitigate climate change issues. Part of what we are doing to address climate change is tree planting. This administration under the able leadership of Dr Abdullahi Umar Ganduje has revived the tree planting campaign. I’m sure you’ll recall that this used to be an annual exercise that has been abandoned for a long time. This time around it has been revived. In the year 2020, Kano state government through the Ministry of Environment has planted two million tree seedlings and last year, 2021 we planted one million tree seedlings in Kano state. This year we are planting one million tree seedlings again. So the exercise has started since and we are now in the the fifth phase of the exercise.
Apart from that we are also embarking on public education and public sensitization in order to raise the awareness of the public towards climate change, what it is and what they can do to help address the issue of climate change.
Again, before the rain sets in, in order to minimize flooding in the state, Kano state now embarks on what we call annual drainage climate exercise. Kano state government spends millions of Naira to ensure that all our major drainages in the city are cleared so that the storm water can have free flow within these drainages. Even some drainages that are very strategic are included in this exercise.
Also the Kano state government has come up with a program that we call keep Kano clean initiative. This program is to ensure that the waste that is being generated in Kano, the thousand a of tonnes of waste that is being generated on daily basis is being evacuated timely. So through this initiative where Kano state government is providing funds and other logistics that are needed for the exercise, including vehicles and plants are made available so that timely evacuation of waste at our evacuation centre is undertaken even in those places we call illegal collection centres where waste has been dumped indiscriminately. On daily basis we have a team that goes out to ensure that all the collection centres are prioritized and evacuated, so that we don’t have accumulation of waste within Kano city.
He mentions what the government is doing about drainages, because lack of proper system also leads to other environmental problems saying:
Concerning the issue of drainage I talked about clearing of drainages as we have undertaken and is still ongoing. Another thing that we do in this ministry is construction of drainages where they are lacking. It is the mandate of the Ministry of Environment to construct these drainages where they are lacking. Right now we are working on the design of some drainages so that they can be constructed so that we can have adequate drainage system within the city.
We also have another activity which is the rehabilitation of drainages where we have drainages that have collapsed, that have become no longer useful, they are not draining the storm of waste water the way they are supposed to drain. These drainages are being rehabilitated. Where we see that the drainages need to be reconstructed we undertake that function. For instance recently there was reconstruction of one of our major drainages in Kano. Is actually not the complete drainage but we discover that there is a point that gas become the problem. The culverts that are supposed to link the two sides of the major drainage are too narrow to undertake the function. Specifically I am talking about the Baban Gwari area close tot he round about, this is an area where year in year out we experience flooding. We accessed the area and realised that there were rung culverts which were supposed to link the two sides of the drainage and we discovered that the rings were too small to be able to convey the volume of water that used to pass through them. So the entire water water area was open up and the ring culverts were removed and we constructed box culverts, big enough to be able to convey the storm water that is coming through them. From that time the problem of flooding in the area has been solved. There are areas like that. Wherever we discover there is problem we intervene timely in order to ensure that the problem being faced is addressed.
On what he plans to achieve before leaving office as a Commissioner of Environment, he confidently says:
I intend to achieve a lot. Part of what I want to achieve before leaving office is to ensure that we have a system, a very robust system of waste management in Kano and the waste that is being generated in the entire state is not only evacuated, but is being utilised to produce some useful products. For instance, you know in developed countries and even in some developing countries, waste is wealth. It is being converted to other useful products, for example to organic manure and even inorganic manure, inorganic fertilizer and in some places the waste is being used to generate electricity. This is what I want to see, the waste that we are generating is becoming an asset to us. So we are putting in place mechanisms to ensure that we achieve these.
Again there are some challenges that we are facing, we needed to have some legal fireworks to help us ensure that we enforce some of these environmental frameworks and guidelines. Without appropriate legal framework you cannot be able to do that. Before leaving office I want to see some of these legal frameworks put in place so as to check some these excesses. For instance we are working on Pollution Control Bill which is purposely going to address the issue of indiscriminate dumping of refuse, the issue of open deification and some other environmental challenges are contained in this bill. So I want to see this bill come into existence to serve as a tool in the environmental sector.
Before this we were working on the Forestry Bill, I want to see this bill becoming a law in Kano state so that we can address the issue of indiscriminate felling of trees in the state. I have mentioned the issue of open deification, which is a serious menace, a serious problem. So I want to see our 44 local government areas in Kano becoming deification free before the end of this tenure “In sha Allah”. These are some of my dreams, to have Kano environment being safe and conducive for living.
