A Professor of Development Studies at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Onyenekenwa Eneh, has urged Nigerians to desist from engaging in activities that are threats to life and environment and protect human lives.
He made the call during an Inaugural Lecture titled: “Taking Life to Higher Level of Development: Quitting the Abuse of Life and Environment that Support Life”, organised by the University of Nigeria Nsukka, Enugu, on Thursday.
Professor Eneh urged government to provide and maintain infrastructure to make life meaningful and forestall abuse of life and environment that support life.
He said; “As life support system, environment is indispensable to life and as such, man ought to preserve and conserve it.
He listed activities that degrade life to include bush burning, tree felling, noise pollution, quarrying, mining, sand winning, use of fossil fuel, open defecation, armament and weaponry of mass destruction degrade life.
Professor Eneh said that the environment that supports life should be preserved and not be abused and destroyed through unhealthy and anti-development habits and actions.
He explained that the lecture was about improving the living standard of man through imbibing and practicalising actions that promote human lives and protect the ecosystem.
.o achieve the feat, Nigerians and governments at every level should quit abusive emotions, and weapons of mass destruction that degrade life and the environment.
“There is the need to harp on these habits and actions and man should quit them if life must be taken to higher level of development” he said.
“To achieve this, the attitude of people to life and environment must change and Nigerians should appreciate life and system that support
“These actions that impact lifespan are mostly found in nutrition, stress and addiction as well as emotion,” he said.
On nutrition, Eneh said the unrealised dangers to good living come from common habits and practices of poor meal planning, too many eating outs and processed junk-foods.
Other attitudes included excessive taking of sugar, mindless eating, lone eating habit, eating on the run and eating giant-sized portions, adding that these actions could cut life by reducing the expectancy .
Earlier in his opening remarks , the Vice-Chancellor of the University, Prof. Charles Igwe, represented by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Daniel Nwachukwu, said the lecture was educative and expository.
He described Eneh as a dual intellectual who combined Chemistry and Development Studies and excelled in both.
The V-C urged the audience to listen as the lecture proved beyond doubt why the university made him a professor, stressing that the students would boost their intellectual horizon .
Highlight of the event was presentation of the inaugural lecture certificate to the professor by the university.
Author: Maureen Ikpeama