Sanitary inspectors are government employees charged with the duty of supervising the sanitation of homes and neighborhoods in every region of Nigeria. They are known as “wole-wole” in Yorubaland, “Nwaole-ala” among the Igbo, and “duba-gari” among the Hausa.
During Nigeria’s colonial era, the sanitary inspector’s office was established. They were initially referred to as “sanitary attendants” because their main duty was to assist colonial masters (sanitary inspectors), who carried out sanitary duties on their own.
A more precise term for the colonial administrators of sanitation was “sanitary inspectors,” and the Nigerians who served under them were known as “sanitary attendants.”.
The meager responsibilities of the sanitary attendants included interpreting for colonial masters, marking tall or bent trees, noting crumbling buildings, adhering announcement or warning bills, etc.
As time went on, the sanitary attendants were given more responsible tasks like daily sanitary checks, gathering water samples, noting mosquito breeding grounds, and so forth.
Many of the sanitary attendants raised their educational standards, which helped their office become more well-known. They started carrying out duties like cutting down large trees that were too close to homes, identifying infectious disease cases, disinfecting and clearing out pests, liaising with the colonial masters and the villagers, verifying notices sent by their colonial masters (sanitary inspectors), and keeping track of daily, weekly, and monthly returns, among other things.
Dr. Isaac Ladipo Oluwole was instrumental in raising the status of Nigerian medical personnel in the 1920s, including the partially recognized sanitary attendants.
In the Lagos colony, Dr. Oluwole served as the first African Medical Officer of Health (MOH) after his return from Britain as a public health physician. He founded the Nigerian School of Hygiene, the country’s first institution of its kind, in Yaba, Lagos, in 1920. This institution educated qualified individuals to work as sanitary inspectors.
The sanitary attendants were now known as sanitary inspectors during this time, and their responsibilities included:
regular inspections for sanitary conditions in homes, markets, schools, and communities.
Environmental sanitation, industrial sanitation, and pollution control all relate to waste management.
Sampling and sanitation of the water.
Port health responsibilities (air, land, and seaports).
Control over infectious diseases that are communicable.
Construction and city planning.
Elimination of pests and vectors. G. Control of malaria.
Court proceedings to punish those who violate public health laws.
Inspection of meat and food.
Disposal of the dead (corpses).
Factory inspection and occupational health.
Vaccination/inoculation of both adults and schoolchildren.
Health instruction on both personal and public hygiene.
Sanitary inspectors in the 1960s.
They were more feared than the colonial policemen of the time because disobeying them meant disobeying the law. As a result, people keep their surroundings clean to avoid falling into their troublesome net.
The World Health Organization (WHO) was founded in 1948, and as more people with higher education entered the field, this development also helped to elevate the status of sanitary inspectors.
Environmental health officers became the official name of the profession in 1988, aligning it with the term used to refer to its practitioners around the world and allowing for those professionals who had earned degrees in public health, environmental health, or epidemiology from their respective universities to join.
Fast forward to the present day, and the sanitary inspectors’ predicament in Nigeria is depressing due to the lack of respect shown for them and their roles. People are labeling the profession as “old-school” and it is vanishing at an alarming rate. Some people are even unaware that environmental health officers, formerly known as sanitary inspectors, still exist.
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