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As part of efforts to raise awareness on the issue of Abandoned, Lost or otherwise Discarded Fishing Gears, we launched a craft contest to mark this year’s World Environment Day. The contest which recorded tremendous success got over forty entries from contestants who made different kinds of items majorly from cast nets. After a rigorous process, the contenders were narrowed down to a sizable number by our competent judges with the top three going home with cash prizes. Here are the profiles of contenders who stood out, as well as the crafts they made.
Peters Oluwatosin is a proud mother of four whom apart from being a computer operator, is also a lover of everything hand made. Based in Lagos State, Oluwatosin was one of the very enthusiastic trainees who came for our craft workshop in Badagry. Being from a a community where most people are predominantly fishers, she is regularly exposed to casually disposed nets mostly used as sponges for bathing or washing and never thought anything good could be gotten from it. During the workshop, She proved herself a genius and even served as a tutor for some of the participants. Hearing about the contest, she made a school and lunch bag for kids with detailed finishing and it earned her the bragging right as the 1st prize winner.
Lunch and School bag by Peters Oluwatosin Apart from the contest, she has also made other items such as foot mats and slippers. Oluwtosin has been going round schools in her community, teaching kids how to create from fishing nets and hopes that with time, she will be able to pass the knowledge to as many people as possible who would perhaps turn it into a source of livelihood. When next you see a child with a beautiful lunch or school bag, look closely, it may just be a cast net creatively repurposed.
Lawrence Alban is a graduate of Fine Arts Education, under Curriculum and Teaching from the University of Uyo, Akwa Ibom State who specializes in painting with biros. He has been into the arts for about six years now. He got to know about the craft contest through a friend. Thinking of what to make with a fish net for the very first time, he decided to make a Halloween themed home décor. Using twines and sugar paper to compliment the fishing nets, Alban created an artwork which shows a spider spinning its web. Given the time constraint, Alban’s artwork was quite exceptional and stood out among the judges. He hopes to continue creating with cast nets as the contest has opened him up to a new form of artistic expression. He is the 2nd place winner
Craft by Lawrence Alban 
Craft by Lawrence Alban Bright Edet Just finished her secondary school last year and is Hoping to get admission into the University. She hails from Ibeno Local Government are of Akwa Ibom State and was among the trainees engaged during the craft workshop by SOFER Initiative in Ibeno community. For the contest, she made a basket, a hat as well as a little bag. Bright says she was inspired by the people who came to teach her and hopes her newly acquired skill will take her places. She emerged as the 3rd place winner.
Craft by Bright Edet Maureen Effiong is a graduate of Environmental Protection and Resource Management from the University of Calabar, Cross River State. She hails from Ibeno Local government of Akwa Ibom State. Just like others, she
learned from a friend about a craft seminar that was to hold in her community and out of curiosity, she decided to attend. After the four days practice, Maureen did not relent. She kept on making crafts for personal use. When the craft contest opportunity presented itself, She went to the HubNet to source some nets, cleaned them up and made a very beautiful décor shaped like a half moon as well as earrings, and door blinds. According to her, all her siblings are also into craft making with cast nets and they are not stopping anytime soon. She emerged as one of the finalist.
Half moon decor by Maureen Helen Edet is a 300 level Communication Arts undergraduate in the University of Uyo. She was one of the cast net craft trainees at Ibeno Local Government. Aside schooling, she is also a creative artist who uses beads to create necklaces, waist beads, hand accessories etc. According to her testament, when she was in the process of creating with cast nets, her friends were wondering what she was up to. It is no surprise that she left them as well as our judges in awe when she was done. She made an colourful decor which can be used at home or bars and restaurants for wall beautification. Helen is part of the finalist.
Craft by Helen Edet Gift Matthew Is a fashion designer from Ibeno Local Government Area who was also part of the workshop carried out by our team. Hoping to stand out amongst the other contestant, she got some nets from our HubNet in the community and made a hair net, basketball rim net as well as a handbag for the contest. She is hopes to move to a major city where she will fuse her fashion design expertise with her newly acquired craft skill to make items that will stand out. This way she will be making money for herself as well as help her community curb the menace of ghost gears. She is also among the finalist.
Handbag by Gift Matthew Oladipupo Kehinde: There is simply no doubt about Kehinde’s talent when it comes to craft as she had already proved herself during the craft training that held in Badagry. Taught how to make a foot mat on the first day, she turned up for the workshop on the second day with a hand bag, derived from some nets she took home. Kehinde who hails from Ijebu Ode, Ogun State entered the craft contest with yet another bag as well as a beautiful wig cap which earned her a comfortable spot amongst the top contenders. The wig can be worn by women who seek a little change from their regular fashion style. She said her hair styling training inspired the idea. Kehinde is also volunteer diver for SOFER Initiative
Bag and Wig by Oladipupo Kehinde *ALL THESE ITEMS AND MORE ARE AVAILABLE FOR SALE ON DEMAND.
Hundreds of years ago, the city you are currently living in was filled with trees, a natural habitat for thousands of animals. But due to the ever growing population of humans and the endless quest for space and territories, lots of wildlife and plant species have been lost to deforestation and poaching. Since the industrial revolution, the air has been highly polluted due to harmful greenhouse gas emission. The ocean as well is not spared as decades of bad practices and human induced pollution has led to sea acidification, oil spills, plastic litter and ghost gear in our waters.
We cannot have the world in the best possible form nature handed us anymore; however, we can take practical steps to making sure the environment is safe again. This is through finding alternatives to actions and practices that causes these damages to the environment. As part of our effort to achieve a greener, healthier environment, we have been carrying out outreach in coastal communities in Nigeria, Sensitizing them through workshops and seminars on the issues of ghost gears and how it can be curbed. Through our staff and community volunteers, we have held crafts workshops for women, teaching them how ghost gears can be turned to valuable items and sold for additional income.
On the 5th of June 2021, we joined the rest of the world to celebrate World Environment Day. As part of the activities for this year’s event, we hosted a creative contest tagged “Ghost Gear for Ecorestoration.” This was in line with the theme for this year which was Ecorestoration. The contest was aimed at engaging crafters from far and near to lend a creative hand to environmental restoration. It was officially launched on the 25th of May for individuals and groups and was open to submissions for about five days. Surprisingly, we received an array of incredible crafts from about 42 crafters, all made from ghost gears.
The contest had Inyene Johson and Ukemeotobasi Inyang ; our in-house craft consultant and trainer respectively, as adjudicators, as well Caroline Bond, an international craft artist from the United Kingdom. The basis for judgement was creativity, market value, finesse and durability and the contestants lived up to expectation. In a virtual ceremony to mark the World Environment Day as well as announce the winners, the Director of SOFER Initiative, Emmanuel Sofa noted that it was imperative for us to seek effective ways to offload the pile of ghost gears currently housed in our HubNets at different locations in the country. He further stated that a top fashion brand is already making plans to make fashion items strictly from ghost gear and as such the contest was a foot in the right direction.
Announcing the top three winners, the guest judge, Caroline Bond admitted to having a hard time picking the winners as there were so many outstanding crafts entered in the contest. Eventually, Bright Edet, who made Baskets, Cup and a Hat was declared the 3rd place winner, taking home the prize money of N20,000. Lawrence Alban, with a beautifully crafted home décor got the second place with the sum of N30,000 while Rosemary Peters who made a school bag and food pack emerged the overall best with the prize money of N50,000. The winners and the top ten contestants will be given exposure by SOFER Initiative through our website and social media handles. We will also help them sell most of the items.
Some of the awardees who attended the virtual event couldn’t hold back their excitement as they thanked the team for putting the contest together. We are also thankful for the massive participation and also extend our appreciation to our sponsor, staff, volunteers and everyone who contributed to making the event a success. We hope to continue with this; inspiring people to join the train of environment restoration. We also plan to make the craft contest even bigger when we celebrate another World Environment Day next year.
We are never in short supply of waste. We produce it every day; both economic and human waste. These wastes can pose big health and economic problems if not handled properly. Most times we do it almost unconsciously. When the wind toss a plastic bag in the air for example, it is good to note that the piece of worthless plastic will outlive us for hundreds of years— it will live long enough to accumulate and consequently cause many environmental problems in the world we’ll leave behind. This can be quite worrisome but, if we realise that those products can always be recycled or reused to our favour, they wouldn’t have to pose a problem after all. In fact, the wastes that lie about are all potential beauty around us; if we look keenly enough. People have been able to make furniture, art works, and other household items from used product. The list of items that can’t be recycled is, luckily for us, quite short and through the advancement in recycling technology; the option to make our planet waste free now lies safely on our lap.
For the past few years, we at SOFER Initiative have been on the frontline of curbing the menace of Ghost Gears in riverine communities, sensitizing people on the proper ways of disposing worn out or damaged fishing gears. We have also organised workshops to teach people how old gears can be converted into usable items such as foot mats, handbags, baskets, etc. Beautiful items with very good commercial value have been created through these exercises. Today being World Recycling Day, we are celebrating the Recycling Heroes who have created something beautiful out of waste, in a bid to inspire others to get creative and responsible, for the sake of our environment.
Basket made from old fish net during a SOFER Initiative Craft Workshop
When we patronize products made from recycled materials, we are in a very big way supporting a green environment. For some products, it is even more economical to recycle— For example, recycling steel can save at least 75% of the energy it would take to create it from raw materials. We can support recycling starting from the clothes we wear. Old bed sheets and apparels we no longer need can be donated to charity or given to the naked bodied street children sprawling some street corners. There are scrap metal dealers everywhere as well. We can take our used aluminium cans and other used metal based products to them. This way, we reduce the risk of it finding its way into open canals and posing problems in future.
Hat made from Fish Net by SOFER Initiative Craft Team We can make conscious efforts to avoid products made from plastics; replace our plastic kitchen wares or boxes with stainless steel that can last over ten years than a plastic would. If you live in a community where there is no curbside collection of plastic bags for recycling, you could get creative and remake them into other items, such as rope strands for drying of clothes, plastic bag bracelets, plastic flowers and even plastic beads. Companies and individuals can also help by reducing their usage of unnecessary plastic bags because they contain harmful chemicals and can also end up in the oceans
Batteries are filled with toxic materials which could cause great harm to our environment. We can curb this by going green and buying rechargeable batteries instead. In some countries, there are some companies that collect used batteries for safe recycling. Even electronics these days can be recycled. We could make our old gadgets available to companies who need them rather than throwing them in the nearest thrash bin.
The government can also help by implementing recycling for organic wastes, especially in populated areas, set up websites according to cities that handles the issue of waste collection and recycling. They could also make a policy which mandates manufacturers to indicate through an icon how any disposable item can be disposed or taken for recycling. Recycle trash bins could be placed strategically in public places such as churches, schools, parks, etc. They could also make sure manufacturers use recyclable materials for packaging of disposable items.
Furthermore, they could make environmental education a mandatory subject for students across board, as well as encourage companies to carry out sensitization on waste management for their staff from time to time. The war against bad waste management can be won but that will only be when we all become Recycle Heroes by reducing the waste we produce, creatively reusing the items we can, and making the rest available for recycling.
When it comes to season preference in Nigeria, it’s always a case of different strokes, different folks. While some may favour the wet, rainy season, others prefer the dry season; one, for the ease of movement as well as the pleasure it affords us at the beach-side, secondly for the memorable punctuation of dusty, dry winds which comes with the stint of harmattan. It’s been a tough dry season so far. Ever since the rains left us late 2020, most people have been hoping for a heavy downpour that will herald the arrival of their darling wet season. The heat has been almost unbearable, especially for people who have to work under the scorching sun on a daily basis. Even those who love the dry season secretly pray for a droplet, at least for a change.
The good thing is that the rain season is fast approaching with all its wonders— the darkening of clouds, the cool, soothing breeze, the race for cover when it pours and the pitty-patter of raindrops on our roofs. It is always a beautiful time of the year. But as we pray for rain, we should also prepare for it, emotionally and by our actions. The rain will surely come as expected. We’ve already had a few days of light showers but, we should be aware that a full blown rain season is not void of its challenges.
Through the course of the dry season, we have carried out activities that are rather harmful to us and the environment. Sometimes we consume carbonated drinks and dump the empty plastic bottles where is most convenient for us. We carelessly dispose of plastic bags, old clothes and other items such as batteries, wet wipes, containers of used household items in overflowing trash cans and worst case scenario; we dump them at road sides. While it may have been convenient for us, it will pose a very serious problem in the long run as most of these items are non-biodegradable.
Credit: Conserve-energy-future.com Most urban areas in Africa operate the Open Sewer system and at the peak of the rainy season, heavy downpour is expected at least once a day. This means that most of the items that had not been properly disposed of will be washed into the open sewer, causing severe social and health complications.
Used non-biodegradable products in an open sewer. Image Source: Twitter.com The plastic bottles, bags and other items will cause clogging in the sewer system, making it hard for the large body of water to pass through. This will by extension cause flooding which is quite harmful to humans and properties. Apart from this, it can also destroy roads. The excess moisture from flooding will reduce the strength of the materials used in making the roads, leading to swells and cracks. Houses close to drainage systems also stand the risk of being destroyed, creating not only economic but social problems. Clogging will also cause dirty body of water to settle in the open sewer, creating a breeding place for mosquitoes, exposing us to a greater chance of contracting malaria and yellow fever. For areas that practice open defecation, dirty rain water may contain faecal matter which throws us open to diseases such as cholera, typhoid, diarrhoea and other viral infections. For those who use rain water for domestic activities, just one of the old dry cell batteries carelessly disposed is capable of contaminating about 400 litres of water.
These open drainage systems open up into the ocean and what this mean is that marine life is not spared the mayhem. Every harmful item that was not properly disposed of will definitely find its way into the ocean, compounding an already existing problem. A plastic dropped in the sea could take hundreds of years before it disintegrates and scientists suggests that about 8 to 12 million tons of plastic are dumped into the ocean every year. Not only does this litter affect marine life, but it also washes onto beaches, gets caught in fishing nets, damages boat motors, is an eyesore and smells really bad. Plastic bags and wrap can asphyxiate marine animals and fishes. Sea birds can easily entangle themselves with plastic bags and strings. Animals also get sick and die from swallowing thrash such as cigarettes, silicon packets and metal scraps. Broken glasses can cut the flesh of birds and other animals. The statistics are not in our favour but against us. We have a whole lot of work to do in order to curb environmental pollution. If everyone can take responsibility by limiting their use of plastic based products, we will stand a chance of having a healthier environment and we will also be able to enjoy the soothing breeze and heavy downpour that comes with the rainy season without fear of destruction.
Road damage caused by flooding. Credit:Mrpnews.org We can also help by clearing out non-biodegradable wastes from the open drainage, give out used clothes to those who need them or properly dispose of it through incineration and also spread the word about the hazards that accompanies bad waste management. Let’s prepare ourselves so we can savour the rains in peace and also save the animals in our planet. Rain is a gift from nature, not a curse.
SOFER Initiative team carrying out a Beach Clean-up Exercise The Environment and Our Journey “SOFER”
It’s a fast moving world. We make and break rules as we go. Things come in and out of fashion but one thing will never change; humanity. No matter whom we are or what we do, we will always need love, care, health, protection from abuse, neglect, exploitation etc. These never come in full supply and we never have our ideal world given the physical/economic wars, diseases, hunger and starvation that plagues us. It’s a sad human condition. We never pay attention to the things that matter and most times, it behoves certain individuals and groups to strategize and address some of these unmet socio-economic problems/needs they see around their immediate environment.
BEACH CLEAN UP EXERCISE All around the world, certain individuals have been on the front-line of making the world a better place through creating products and services to ease the burden of living. They have successfully created businesses, employed thousands of people, giving them financial independence. There are however others, who don’t run businesses or sell products, but carry out activities and needs the world government and private businesses for one reason or the other may not be able to meet. These are the Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO). Since 2014, the 27th of February of every year is usually set aside to celebrate the strides and efforts these groups contribute to humanity.
Right from the 18th Century, there have been several NGO’s the world over contributing their quota to maintaining a secure society and functional environment, encouraging healthy, active populations, reducing rates of diseases, strengthening the local populace and providing succour for economically and socially stressed communities. For the past ten years, we at SOFER INITIATIVE have been on the leading edge of environmental reforms, educating and creating awareness through working with youths and other bodies to provide practical opportunities for positive behavioural change. Today being The World NGO Day, we are joining the train and counting our gains.
The journey “SOFER” has been amazing as we have been able to actively engage various communities in Nigeria, sensitizing them through different programmes such Green Christmas project, Envirotainment, The Serene Uyo Campaign, Slam Dunk Your Trash, Beat Air Pollution, Boot camp Environmental Education (BEE), Beach Clean-up Exercise as well as our most recent, The Fishing Net Gains Project. Given the fact that fishery as a sector employs about 12 million Africans, we must do everything to ensure that the ocean and the lives in it are sustained and consequently, the source of livelihood it provides equally maintained or perhaps, improved. We have succeeded in raising awareness on the impact of Abandoned, Lost or otherwise Discarded Fishing Gears, (ALDFGs) and also proffered practical solutions and training for fishers on acceptable international best practices.
FISHING NET GAINS PROJECT This was made possible by our sponsors; The Ghost Gear Initiative (GGGI), Ocean Conservancy (OC), The Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), Canada as well as the countless volunteers who brought their skills to bear in this cause. This is only the beginning and we will not stop. The world is ours and if we don’t take care of it, it’s our loss. It’s a duty we owe to ourselves and generations to come. As we mark the World NGO Day today, we say thank you to our sponsors, volunteers and other stakeholders who have made it possible for us to make tremendous impact over the last decade. Let’s make a toast to better things to come and renew our pledges to Stand Out For Environmental Restoration!
