ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT AND CONTROL EDUCATION IN NIGERIA

By

Dr. Ben. O. Uwadiegwu, MNITP, RTP

Presented To

Department of Environmental Management

 The application of sophisticated technology in a laissez- faire economy to provide for the diverse needs of ever increasing population led to series of environmental stress and crises. The magnitude and complexity of these environmental problems evoked the raising of alarm from various quarters calling for urgent attention to the myriads of environmental problem issues, if man's survival will be guaranteed. These alarms created the pressure that later gave rise to environmental management and control discipline and profession. In practical terms, environmental management and control is multi-disciplinary in scope and requires the training of crops of professionals that will be equipped with critical and analytical skills to provide both preventive and corrective measures to address all dimensions of environmental problems. Thus, the environmental and control education aims at training and producing competent personnel that will be intellectually equipped with sufficient and relevant theoretical and technical knowledge as well as skills for dealing with the problems caused by developmental projects and also who will possess the multi-disciplinary perspectives to team up with other professionals to achieve sustainable development in various aspects of human endeavours. Regrettably, it is only 30 out of 107 Universities and other 52 degree/HND/NCE awarding tertiary institutions in Nigeria that offer environmental management and control education. This is abysmally too low and poor which partly explains why environmental problems appear intractable in Nigeria. For sustainable development to become feasible and realizable in Nigeria, environmental education must be made compulsory in all tertiary levels of education as well as in pre-tertiary schools. Environmental management graduates are trained to work in the public and non-public establishments and as well as possess adequate skills to set up their private consultancy firms and become employers of labour.   
KEYWORDS: Environment, management, education, preventive and corrective measures, multidisciplinary, developmental projects.

INTRODUCTION  
Historically, the earth as the home of man has never been without changes and modifications. Some natural events such as earthquakes, volcanoes, ocean movements, cyclones, tectonic activities e.t.c were the major sources of environmental hazards which resulted to widespread environmental modifications and diversitations.  However, the advent of man on earth introduced new dimensions of environmental hazards resulting from the fact that man has to exploit the resource base of the environment to provide for his daily needs.  The rate of exploitation of the environmental resource base depended on the size of human population and the diversity of their needs that must be satisfied.  During the early stage of human occupation of the earth the rate of exploitation of the environment was quite minimal because the population size and human needs were low and so the environmental effect was quite negligible.  Even when human activities such as cutting trees for firewood or to construct shelter or grazing animals produced some environmental degradation, nature had the capacity to nullify or neutralize such adverse effects. What is causing anxiety now is that the magnitude of environmental problems is becoming overwhelming as a result of the increase in the tempo of developmental activities and projects in attempt to provide adequate sustenance for the population which is growing at a very fast rate. 

CAUSAL FACTORS OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS 
1) Human Population: Serious environmental problems started with the increase of human population on earth coupled with the diversification of the requirements to sustain such population because the environmental resources happened to be the only sources of sustenance which must be exploited to provide for the welfare of man. The rate of -