109-year-old akara seller arrested during Abia sanitation exercise

The Abia State Government on Saturday arrested a 109-year-old bean cake (akara) seller, Chidinma Eluwa, for allegedly violating the state’s monthly environmental sanitation exercise.

Eluwa was arrested for frying bean cakes along Owerri Road during the sanitation period and was later arraigned before the Sanitation Court alongside 65 other alleged offenders.

However, Magistrate O. C. Ibekwe discharged the elderly woman on compassionate grounds after she pledged to comply with the state’s sanitation regulations.

Out of the 66 persons arraigned, seven were also discharged on health and student-related grounds, while nine others were sentenced to community service for violating the sanitation order.

Meanwhile, the Abia State Government warned that it may adopt stricter enforcement measures following what it described as poor compliance with the monthly environmental sanitation exercise.

Speaking after monitoring the exercise, the Commissioner for Environment, Philemon Ogbonna, who was represented by the Head of Population Control and Environmental Health, Happiness Akpulonu, expressed disappointment over residents’ low participation.

He attributed the poor turnout to the suspension of the sanitation exercise for several months, which he said resulted in the accumulation of refuse in major markets, including Orie Ugba Market.

“We were overwhelmed. My team could not clear all the refuse we were meant to clear. Residents in Umuahia especially respond better to enforcement than advice. We may have to stop advising them and start enforcing compliance,” he said.

Ogbonna also urged local government chairmen to mobilise residents and strengthen supervision to ensure improved participation in future sanitation exercises.

Also speaking, the Chairman of the Abia State House of Assembly Committee on Environment, Kalu Mba-Nwoke, said the three-month suspension of the sanitation exercise contributed to the low level of compliance.

He encouraged residents to make environmental cleanliness a daily responsibility rather than limiting clean-up efforts to designated sanitation days.

The leader of the Northern Community in Abia State and Chairman of the Northern Traditional Council for the South-South and South-East, Alhaji Yaro Danladi, reaffirmed his community’s support for the monthly sanitation exercise.

Danladi said members of the community actively participated in the clean-up exercise as part of efforts to promote a cleaner and healthier environment across the state.