By BMDzukogi
As you step into the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, the awesome radiance of its colourful surroundings and the breath-taking ebullience of flowers and trees, gleefully making ballet dance-steps in varying styles, straight ahead, winding into corners of cute patterns of lawns, simply leave you gapping in prolonged smiles with internal excitement and glow of a paradise dweller. Such is the magnificence of the A.B.U environment. One never thought Nigerians have the knack, competence and patience to becalm a vast dry land into misty garden of expansive beauty. So why must the writer recreate his environment? Why should people indulge in tree, flower and grass planting around them?
A recreated environment stimulates one’s sense of appeal. If man confronts a natural environment, he appreciates it, he feels happy, peaceful, all of which increase one’s emotional and mental balance for good health and good action. All men, irrespective of their poor personal health habit have a sense of appeal, a knack for beautiful and new things. One’s sense of beauty is further incensed in the presence of trees and flowers which are essential beautifiers that maintain the nature of environment. The aesthetics of a recreated environment becomes even intensified with good paints and creeping plants around buildings. These are some of the encounters artists need, for efficiency.
Generally, it is important to recreate environment to flush out unwanted organisms that cause discomfort and disease to man. The proper disposal of waste materials such as polythene bags or wrappers, pieces of papers, empty cans and proper drainage system, clearing of bushes or their management, combine to make man healthy and happy because micro-organisms that can breed diseases to retard creativity and performance will not have a place to strive and multiply to wreck havoc on human lives.
The continuous and regular removal of these agents of physiological destabilisation should be the pre-occupation of cities, villages, schools, offices, and organisations. A well-managed environment softens the heart of men and removes anger to produce smiles, whence he becomes refreshed for a happy dwelling, innovativeness, good social relations and greater productivity. In an educational institution, beautiful environment can be highly inspiring to reduce the stress of academic activities. No wonder, lovers need gardens, quite corners, cosy rooms, riversides where they easily melt, peacefully into the solemnity such environments offer. Have you ever wondered why God’s promise of a blissful home is a garden of trees and palms? Do you wonder why the homes in that garden are said to be positioned in serenity and stillness, wafting with harmonious breeze, incensed by the metallic voices of chirping birds in magnificent rhymes? If this is the ultimate God wishes for man then why not begin to enjoy it from the earth by planting trees and flowers all around you.
Similarly, an environment landscaped with flowers, trees keep the surroundings moist, cool and breezy that abounds with oxygen, the most essential requirement the body needs to get to the next minute. Oxygen is life. It is life because it replenishes blood. Blood in turn nourishes the body cells for activation. The trees around are chiefly the producers oxygen. Therefore, an environment polluted by stench, smoke, excessive dryness is a simple pollution of one’s body and by extension one’s tomorrow. This causes man’s creative energy to retard. He will simply lack the soundness of body and mental balance to push on the pen being chopped off by infected body internal environment.
The ozone layer which naturally serves as an umbrella for the earth from excessive sunrays is gradually being perforated by gaseous release from industrial and even domestic activities of man, which is heating up the earth. This posses danger to man, among which is skin cancer depletion in soil content that makes agricultural practices difficult. Therefore, trees, flowers with well laid out grasses can give immediate succour and aesthetic sense and reduce the effect of this “heating up” of the earth. It is the new potential danger to human existence. May be, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) can be managed but how do you manage the fact that our own doing has driven oxygen farther away from us. Writers should deemphasise political pieces and also focus on the essentials of life like the environmental degradation and pollution.
Finally, the management and preservation of environment should be a daily pre-occupation of individuals for it is the first step towards the acquisition of a sound mind in a sound body, increase creativity and its collection, and the promotion of productivity and quality of one’s steps. And remember, such natural make-ups are not to be destroyed for it will amount to a gradual destruction of self.