Mr. Sunday Nana lives in Koko village, Nigeria, with his wife and four children. The village is like other African villages—beautiful and noisy. Nana's house is like other houses having a roof of rusting iron sheets.
However, there is one difference : there are three large empty metal drums before Nana’s house. They have been marked with the skull and crossbones though the red paint has somewhat flaked away. At a distance of 200 m near the village stream, there is a huge and high pile of such drums. Some of them are oorrodina. Their slimy contents leek out and fall into the stream. The villagers use its water for drinking. Some drums emit smoke during the midday heat, while the others. look swollen or burst.
Nana told that those drums were unloaded there five years ago by many big lorries. No one knew what was inside them. They had given the chief some money in a brown paper bag and then they went away. Three months ago. Thomas Agonyo, a University Student in Lagos, pent all day to examine those drums. later, he called a meeting of the villagers and told them that the drums had come from Italy and contained poisonous chemicals.
Nana had a troubled look on his face. He told that 13 persons had died in the last live years. Such gainful deaths were never seen before. Lots of children were sick They wrote to the Government of Italy and asked the Government to take away the drum but to no avail. Instead, they have been asked to settle at another place. But they have no money to buy land. They will have to stay there and death would be their neighbour.
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