International Journal of Environmental Science, Management and Engineering Research Vol. 2 (1), pp. 24-29, Jan-Feb.

, 2013
Available online at http://www.ijesmer.com
2013 IJESMER

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH, SAFETY AND ENVIRONMENT (HSE) TREND IN NIGERIA

Adeogun B.K.* and Okafor C.C.
Department of Water Resources and Environmental Engineering,
Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria.
*Correspondence to: E-mail: adeogunbk@gmail.com
Accepted 4th February, 2013.

ABSTRACT
This paper examined the trend of Occupational Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) right from its
evolutionary stage to its current practice in Nigeria. The few companies that recognize occupational
health and safety are the big multinationals who are running the policies as constituted in their parent
countries of origin. Most of the indigenous establishments see HSE myopically such as cleanliness of
the environment alone. Hence, the perspectives of most industries and organizations show that the
stage of Occupational HSE is still at infancy in the country due to employer/employee attitudinal
behaviour, lack of safety culture and non-implementation of HSE policies. This paper advocates that
work places should embrace a safety culture and put in place Systematic Occupational HSE
Management Systems that will be valued as other organizational core functions
Key words: Occupational Health and Safety, Environment, HSE, Safety Culture.

INTRODUCTION
The occupational health and safety in workplaces
is assessed with reference to Nigeria. The
presentation started with the evolution of safety
and then evaluated the current situation in the
country. The necessary strategic procedures for
any organization to integrate occupational health
and safety programme into her activities are
discussed. These procedures are analysis of hazard
risk management, the adoption of successful
occupational health and safety management
system and, the integration of safety culture to
sustain the system. The existing occupational
health and safety acts were also evaluated and
conclusions and recommendations were drawn
based on the study.
The Evolution of Safety
At the pre-historic stage, safety was regarded as an
individual companys own problem. The aftermath

of a number of industrial-based disasters,

predominantly in Europe created more safety
awareness. A very good example is the
Flixborough accident in 1974, when a whole
village was blown away as a result of an explosion
at the Nipro Ltd. Caprolactam production facility,
which led to the first requirement for
petrochemical companies to present a safety case
(Venart, 2007). In the early 1980, safety was taken
seriously and the Enhanced Safety Management
Principles (ESM) were introduced by some
organizations like Shell. After the Piper Alpha
disaster in 1987, the requirement for Safety
Management Systems (SMS) eventually led to the
realization that SMS could be generalized to
Health Safety and Environment-Management
Systems. The next stage is to develop an
organisational culture within which all these
developments flourish as shown in Figure 1.

Adeogun B.K. and Okafor C.C / International Journal of Environmental Science, Management and Engineering Research Vol. 2 (1), pp. 24-29, JanFeb., 2013. Available on-line at http:// www.ijesmer.com

Figure 1. Evolution of safety

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY

MANAGEMENT: NIGERIAN PERSPECTIVE
Occupational health and safety programmes were
first introduced in Nigeria during the time the country
was a British colony. These programmes ensured that
occupational health workers were dispatched to
industrial plants and other commercial undertakings,
including plantations, for monitoring (Onyejeji,
2011). This initiative led to legislation that included
Labour Act of 1974, the Factories Act of 1987 and
The Workmans Compensation Act of 1987. Other
relevant acts to occupational health and safety in
Nigeria are Labour Acts 1990 and Workmans
Compensation Act, 2004 of the laws of the
Federation of Nigeria.
Nevertheless, these acts are not being enforced in
Nigeria as evidence from the reports of unhealthy
exposure to risks of workers and employees in
various organizations. Iden (2010), the Chief
Executive Officer of Occupational Health and Safety
Managers Ltd, Nigeria, narrated his experience in his
letter on organizations negligence to occupational
health and safety, to the International Labour
Organization (ILO) as follows, we have visited
some of the organizations to solicit for opportunities
to allow us train their employees in Occupational

Health and Safety and they bluntly tell us they do not

need it. The few companies in Nigeria who
recognise occupational health and safety are the big
multinationals who are running the policies
constituted in their parent countries of origin (Iden,
2010, and Okojie 2010). Also, Idoro (2011)
investigated occupational health and safety
management efforts and performance of Nigerian
construction contractors and concluded that the
contractors management efforts on occupational
health and safety do not reflect in their scope of
operations and the accident and injury rates of the
Nigerian construction industry are high.
Okojies (2010) observation from the Director of
Inspectorate of Factories, Federal Ministry of labour,
Abuja revealed that, in practice, sealings or
prohibitions of default factories occur rarely because
the factories are usually owned by powerful
individuals in the society: the political class or their
friends. In situations where a factory inspector
attempts to insist on enforcement of the existing
regulations, he may be molested. He added that as at
2010, there are only 60 factory inspectors distributed
all over the country and answerable to the Director,
Inspectorate of Factories. He therefore concluded that
although, there is a system in place in Nigeria for the
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Adeogun B.K. and Okafor C.C / International Journal of Environmental Science, Management and Engineering Research Vol. 2 (1), pp. 24-29, JanFeb., 2013. Available on-line at http:// www.ijesmer.com

reporting of occupational diseases, the system is

weak and ineffective.
Personal interaction with Health, Safety and
Environment (HSE) Officers in some organizations
in Nigeria, during student industrial training
supervision, reveals that the act of HSE is still at
infancy. Most of them absolutely do not observe
regular discussion on HSE as being practiced by most
big multinationals weekly; a programme they
commonly referred to as HSE talk. The very few
organizations that observed the HSE talk do so
probably once in a month. Also, some of the
organizations visited see HSE as only the neatness of
the employees and the cleanliness of toilets and the
environment. This is to say that the HSE practice in
the country is below the standards stipulated by law.
Nigeria was among the countries that signed the
occupational health and safety law in the Geneva
Convention of 1981, however, the law has not been
domesticated into our local laws. The achievement so
far since then was the enactment of a law that would
take care of the health and safety of industrial
workers, by a bill that passed through the second
reading on the floor of the senate on 25th February,
2009 (Iden, 2010).

HAZARD RISK MANAGEMENT

Harzard risk management is important in
organizations so that identified control measures for
hazards in the organizations can be incorporated into
the occupational health and safety management
discussed in the next section. Hazard risk
management is often represented as a four-step
process.

Identification: In order to uncover which
hazards should be considered, hazards register
is compiled which consists of the various
hazards that can be found in a given
operation.

Assessment: This means reorganizing hazards

and grouping into high risk major hazards,
medium risk and low risks hazards.

Risk control: Control of risk is a way of
eliminating the identified hazards if possible
or at least, preventing workers from the
hazard.

Monitoring: This involves asking some key
questions and working again through the
other three steps

ESTABLISHING
A
SUCCESSFUL
OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY
MANAGEMET
The successful occupational health and safety
management system presented in the paper is detailed
out in Health and Safety Executive (2000) and
Ramroop et. al. (2004). The key elements of the
system and their inter-relationships are represented
using a model. By definition, a model is defined as a
simplified representation of the key properties of an
object, event or relationship and it can be verbal,
physical
or
mathematical.
The
successful
occupational health and safety model is illustrated in
figure 2.
Policy:
It is of utmost importance that
organizations should develop a formal occupational
health and safety policy which states the purpose
behind it and requires the active participation of all
those involved in the programs operation. Also, the
law requires that the policy should be signed by the
Chief Executive Officer of the organization and
displayed at a place where the employers normally
report for work. Effective occupational health and
safety policies set a clear direction for the
organization to follow in terms of occupational health
and safety. The policy should be appropriate to the
nature and scale of the organizations occupational
health and safety risks. The process of hazard risk
identification is as detailed out in the previous
section.

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Adeogun B.K. and Okafor C.C / International Journal of Environmental Science, Management and Engineering Research Vol. 2 (1), pp. 24-29, JanFeb., 2013. Available on-line at http:// www.ijesmer.com

Figure 2. Key elements of successful occupational health and safety management model

Organising: The second building block of the

successful
occupational
health
and
safety
management model is the organising component.
Organising is the process of creating a structure for
the organisation that will enable its human resources
to work together effectively towards its objectives or,
in this case, occupational health and safety policy.
Hence, Organisations need to define the
responsibilities and relationships which promote a
positive health and safety culture, and secure the
implementation and continued development of the
health and safety policy.

The defined responsibility could be such that

managers take full responsibility for controlling
factors that could lead to ill health, injury or loss. The
arrangements start with nominating a senior person at
the top of the organisation to co-ordinate and monitor
policy implementation. Occupational health and
safety responsibilities are allocated to line managers,
with specialists appointed to act as advisors.
Planning and Implementing: Planning is essential
for the implementation of health and safety policies.
Planning function consists of an overall strategy for

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Adeogun B.K. and Okafor C.C / International Journal of Environmental Science, Management and Engineering Research Vol. 2 (1), pp. 24-29, JanFeb., 2013. Available on-line at http:// www.ijesmer.com

achieving organizational goals, and includes a

comprehensive hierarchy of plans to integrate and coordinate activities. Planning is essential for the
implementation of occupational health and safety
policies, and forms the third building block of the
successful occupational health and safety model.
A systematic planning approach is necessary to
answer three key questions with respect to
occupational health and safety:

Where are we now (i.e., current situation)?

Where do we want to be (i.e., standards
stipulated by law)?
How do we get there?

Measuring Performance: Measuring

performance is the forth-building block of the
successful occupational health and safety model.
Organisations need to measure what they are doing to
implement their health and safety policy, to assess
how effectively they are controlling risks, and how
well they are developing a positive health and safety
culture. Measurement is essential to maintain and
improve health and safety performance. There are
two ways to generate information on measuring
performance:

active
systems
which
monitor
the
achievement of plans and the extent of
compliance with standards; i.e., routine
procedures to monitor specific objectives, e.g.
quarterly or monthly
reactive systems which monitor accidents, ill
health and incidents.

Effective procedures for measuring performance are

needed to capture both sorts of information.
Managers should be given the responsibility for
monitoring the achievement of objectives and
compliance with standards for which they and their
subordinates are responsible. There need to be
performance standards for managers to indicate how
they will monitor.
Auditing and Reviewing Performance:
Auditing
performance is the structured process of collecting
independent information on the efficiency,

effectiveness and reliability of the total health and

safety management system and drawing up plans for
corrective actions. Reviewing is the process of
making judgements about the adequacy of
performance and taking decisions about the nature
and timing of the actions necessary to remedy
deficiencies. Reviewing should be a continuous
process undertaken at different levels within the
organization. Review plans may include monthly
reviews of individuals, supervisors or sections; threemonthly reviews of departments; annual reviews of
sites or of the organisation as a whole.
Auditing and performance review are the final steps
in the health and safety management control cycle.
They constitute the feedback loop which enables an
organisation to reinforce, maintain and develop its
ability to reduce risks to the fullest extent and to
ensure the continued effectiveness of the health and
safety management system. Organisations can
maintain and improve their ability to manage risks by
learning from experience through the use of audits
and performance reviews.

SAFETY CULTURE
The safety evolution process discussed in section 1
above describes industrial safety transition from
unsafe to safe organization. A way of maintaining
a safe organization is by integrating a safety
culture into the organizations values. Safety
culture is necessary for the adopted occupational
health and safety management model described
above to flourish in an organization. Culture is
defined specifically as the ways of thinking,
behaving and believing that members of a social
unit have in common. Hence, a safety culture is a
special case of such a culture, one in which safety
has a special place in the concerns of those who
work for the organization. Once safety is in place
in an organizations culture, the organization can
be regarded as having a safety culture. But it is
after a certain stage of development of such
culture that the organization can be said to take
safety sufficiently serious to be identified with a
safety culture.
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Adeogun B.K. and Okafor C.C / International Journal of Environmental Science, Management and Engineering Research Vol. 2 (1), pp. 24-29, JanFeb., 2013. Available on-line at http:// www.ijesmer.com

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

It can be concluded from the foregoing that:

The few companies in Nigeria who recognise

occupational health and safety are the big
multinationals who are running the policies as
constituted in their parent countries of origin.
Occupational health and safety practice is still
at infancy in most indigenous organizations in
Nigeria.

Iden E., (2010), Occupational Health and Safety

Managers (Nigeria): A Copy of My Appeal Letter
to ILO
Idoro G.I., (2011). Comparing Occupational Health
and Safety (OHS) Management Efforts and
Performance
of
Nigerian
Construction
Contractors. Preview Manuscript, Journal of
Construction in Developing Countries.

Hence, it is recommended that the International

Convention and Treaty on occupational health and
safety law jointly signed by Nigeria and other
countries should be domesticated into the local laws
and enforced in order to achieve acceptable
occupational health and safety in Nigeria.

Okojie O., (2010), Systems for Reporting

Occupational Diseases in Nigeria, Africa
Newsletter on Occupational Health and Safety
2010; Vol. 20 (3): 51-53.

REFERENCE

Ramroop S., McCarthy J.J. and Naidoo K., (2004).

Successful Occupational Health and Safety: A
Management Perspective. Proceedings of 8th
World Congress on Environmental Health.
Document Transformation Technologies, South
Africa, pp 22-27

Health and Safety Executive. 2000. Successful health

and safety management. London: HSE Books.
Hudson P. (2001). Safety Management and Safety
Culture: The Long, Hard and Winding Road in
Occupational Health and Safety Management
Systems. Proceedings of the First National
Conference. Cleveland Printing, Australia.

Onyejeji N., (2011), Nigeria Public Policy. Global

Policy Brief, No 18, January 2011.
www.bc.edu/agingandwork

Venart J.E.S. (2007). Flixborough: A final footnote.

Journal of Loss Prevention in the process
industries, 20, 621643.

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