Why preaching with loudspeaker, mobile noise, others should be regulated?

 

 

By Okechukwu Onuegbu

 

Last week Saturday, there was a trend on ban of street and market preaching by the Governor of Anambra State, Nigeria, Professor Chukwuma Soludo. Soludo, in a viral video, spotted a young man preaching at Ochanja, an open market at Onitsha, with loudspeaker and cautioned him to stop polluting the public with noise.

“If you want to preach, go to a church. Those who want to listen will come to you; you cannot force people in the market to hear your message. This is a marketplace, not a church. You are violating the law. You cannot take over a public space and turn it into a church; otherwise, you will be charged for using this space.

“You will pay N500,000 because we cannot allow this. We have banned loudspeakers in markets due to noise pollution, which affects people’s eardrums. You cannot force people to listen to your preaching. We are cracking down on fake pastors and prophets in Anambra,” he stated.

 He was referring to Anambra State Public Health Law (2006) which prohibits excessive noise in public places. The law, among other things, prohibited noise that can disturb public peace In section 8(1, 4b) and outlines penalties against violations in section 9(1, 2). Individuals caught violating noise regulations can face fines up to ₦500,000.

The governor’s order attracted criticism from some religious leaders who saw it as an attack on the body of Christ. But the government statement was actually aimed at mitigating the effect of climate change which is adversely affecting the world. Noise pollution is a climatic issue requiring urgent attention.

It is a disruptive action affecting the environment and its inhabitants, including how things are run, organised or comprehended. Like other pollutants, its impacts on humans and animals are too numerous to mention. The National Geographic Institute says that millions of people are feeling the bitter impact daily.

 

According to the institute, "the children who live near noisy airports or streets have been found to suffer from stress and other problems, such as impairments in memory, attention level, and reading skill."

 

 

 

It could be determined by amounts of sound emitting from animate and inaninate, including objects like speakers or sound system, musicals, metals, gongs, band, horns from vehicles and others. In Nigeria, everywhere is almost noisy. If not from people discussing, it would be power generating sets, music, vehicles on the streets, mobile drugs and other hawkers, people responding to phone calls or some other issues.

 

Some experts also argued that noise is every unwanted sound, discussions or disruptions. Sound could be measured in decibels ranging from 20 to 30 decibels , 120 decibels, and 120 to 140 decibels.  At 85 decibels, sounds are considered to be dangerous and harmful to the body. Sound sources that exceed this threshold could induced hearing loss, heart diseases, stress disturbances, high blood pressures and other cardiovascular disorders.

A mental health expert and psychologist, Professor Arline Bronzaft of the New York, described noise as an environment pollutant, unwanted sound, intrusive and disturbing. Like other researchers, she believed that it impacts on mental health included anxiety, sleep disturbances and depression.

“Well, let me just say quiet enhances health. I didn’t say silence because I still want to hear birds. I still want to hear the air blowing, and I still want to hear the babbling of young children,” she states in a podcast, adding that sound must not be loud enough to be considered a noise.

An Awka, Anambra State based social commentator and public relations expert, Mr Uche Osunkwo argued that noise has ugly disorganising spiritual, physical and psychological dimensions, adding that  one is a product of our traditional milieu while the other comes from unnatural amplifying effects of modern productions.

Who are impacted most by noise?

Noise pollution is affecting everyone. In fact, Bronzaft posited that “Noise doesn’t discriminate. It can go everywhere. You never know in your quiet community that a facility may be built next to you that will impose noise and you could be as well-to-do as Donald Trump, and you couldn’t stop the planes from flying over your home.”

 Even pregnant women exposed to such excessive noise face risks of fetal development, while distrusting learning and cognitive abilities in children, especially in schools located near noisy areas. The Director of Planning, Research, and Strategy, National Orientation Agency (NOA),  Mr Chinedu Okwelogu believed that there should be an urgent steps to regulate (if not eliminate altogether) noise pollution in Nigeria because it affects pupils and students learning, mind sports professionals, health practitioners and others.

“Quiet is calming to the nerves, the mind, and the body. Pupils and students in school will be able to focus on their studies without interruption of their thought processes. Mind sport athletes of Scrabble, chess, and draughts will be able to fine-tune their winning strategies. Ecclesiastics will be enabled to concentrate on how best to tackle the more problematic societal ills. Government workers will labour in environments that conduce to their serving the society better. Health workers and patients will find that the serenity of the hospital environment is so salutary and salubrious that recovery rates triple and mortality rates due to stress decline,” he added.

To mitigate it excesses and impact, legislations come to play. In Nigeria, some of the existing legal regulations against noise pollution are National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA) Act of 2007 and the National Environmental Noise Standards and Control Regulations of 2009. They stipulated penalties against certain levels of noise ranging from fines of ₦5,000 daily for individuals to ₦500,000 for corporate bodies, as well as imprisonment for offenders.

The government also provided for noise control via urban planning through separation of noise-sensitive areas from residential homes. This includes building schools, hospitals and residential zones away from high-noise impact zones like industrial areas and markets. Unfortunately, religious adherents, hawkers of drugs and others are flooding these areas with their megaphones and other mobile devices to disrupt the airwaves. There are also those who mounted their megaphones and loudspeakers for preaching atop religious houses.

Why?

A media consultant and climate change mitigation expert, Comrade Alfred Ajayi attributed this to lack of public awareness on existing laws and regulations in Nigeria. “There is a need for government to make laws that will be all encompassing in addressing all kinds of noise pollution. There is noise at homes, offices, streets even moto parks and others. The law placing bans on noise should be popularized.  Nigeria has several things governed by the law but people are not aware of them. It is true that ignorance of law is not an excuse. But a good percentage of Nigerians run foul of laws because of ignorance. The government should not wait until people fall victims of this before they will speak. The provisions should be made available to all in simple terms. The government should also embark on sensitisation and enlightenment campaign with various  stakeholders to reach a compromise for the laws to perfectly work,” he noted.

Okwelogu, who also believed that ignorance is responsible for non-compliance to existing regulations on noise pollution, added that “ You cannot comply with a law whose existence you are unaware of. The second cause is the difficulty inherent in breaking an already established habit. When people have been born into a noisy environment and they have grown up in that environment, it is natural for them to resist the imposition of a radically different existence on them.

“Thirdly, there is the false sense of possession of fundamental human rights under the Nigerian Constitution that confers on the presumed possessor the spurious right to be as loud as they want in the discharge of their daily doings, *forgetting that where one individual’s rights end is where another individual’s rights begin*.”

Solution

Osunkwo believed no right-thinking person would not support any reasonable project to control menace of noise pollution but it must include holisticand collaborative  efforts with the citizenry.  “Apart from people who exploit noise for diverse objectives and those who have psychological addiction to it, as among those who would kick against its control, a lot of people appear not to appreciate its serious polluting effects, even as they often feel discomforted by it.

“So, as much as the need for control is not in doubt, care should be taken to carry the people along in the novel action against a nuisance they have been living with, and used to, so to speak. As real action is being taken against obvious harmful cases of noise production, education, enlightenment and sensitization strategies should be seriously  emphasized on, through which the people’s ignorance of its harm could be addressed,” he stated.

 

On his part, Okwelogu called for strengthening  the law enforcement agents and  reformation starting from parents at homes before coming to the public. “The best social reformation takes place in the home, so parents who have imbibed the gospel of the war against noise pollution should assign themselves the task of sensitising and mobilising their children to compliance right there in their homes. State and local government authorities should immediately embark on emplacing warning signposts with written fines for violation in secretariat and residential areas, *prohibiting blaring of car horns at any time of the day or night* in those areas.

“The police or equivalent traffic authority should be authorised to enforce compliance with those warnings with a proper remittance system for the fines. Federal and state public enlightenment outfits should devise elaborate programmes implementable throughout the state, by which all rural and urban populaces will be fully apprised of the laws to be complied with. Such organisations include the National Orientation Agency, the Federal and Anambra State Ministries of Information, the Anambra State Civic Reformation Office, Roman Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, and Pentecostal church associations, primary, secondary, and tertiary school authorities and their supervising Ministry of Education, and a host of others.