UNILAG SENATE HOUSE ON FIRE!!!

  

It was about ten o'clock am on the 7th of September, 2014 when a mutual friend of my roommates and I barged into our room screaming 'the Senate House is on fire'. Plagued by curiosity, I raced out with one of my roommates after the girl -our mutual friend- towards the stairs and, we were struck by the sight of thick, harsh clouds of smoke; so grey it bordered on being black. I raced up the stairs to the top floor of my hall, Honours, to catch an exclusive view and that was precisely what I got. The smoke was massive and growing by the second, further marring the clear skies.

       

Of course, it wasn't the Senate House burning like the world was coming to an end and, further inquisition took us to Room 58 where from the window, we saw a colossal pile of used tyres and dirt burning and spitting more misconception in form of smoke into the atmosphere from Iwaya. It would have been the next best thing to fireworks during Christmas if one hadn't the slightest clue of the consequences...THE DEPLETION OF THE OZONE LAYER aka that part of the Earth's stratosphere preventing us all from dying of excessive radiation.

      

 The ozone layer was discovered in 1913 by Charles Fabry and Henri Buisson, both French Physicists and, 'educated' the world today of its absorption of the sun's medium-frequency ultraviolet light. Efucated, in the sense that, it is a well-known fact that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), hydro fluorocarbons (HCFCs) and other ozone depleting substances (ODS) such as methyl bromide (used as a pesticide), halons (used in fire extinguishers), methyl chloroform (used as solvent in industrial process for essential application) and, the most common, burning of dirt such as degradable and non-degradable substances to release huge amounts of smoke -like the one we sited today- which decreases oxygen and that's what ozone is formed from.

        

 This issue has been drowned, revived then drowned again and it no doubt would continue to be. I cannot stop you from burning dirt that make people think the Senate House is on fire because of its 'outrageousness'; you can. But, I can tell you that someday when the ozone layer has finally been depleted and, maybe you and I are no longer walking the surface of the earth to see what we have done; people will indeed suffer from our carelessness and refusal to make at least, an attempt to go GREEN.

ALIU KUBURAT ANIYOR

MASS COMMUNICATION DEPARTMENT, UNILAG