The complaints are not the product of disgruntled and disenchanted political adversaries but a genuine concern and reasonable lamentation of troubled taxpaying residents who feel the government is not doing enough in the area of sanitation and waste management in the state. The challenge of waste collection and disposal is not so much about social factors or individual disposition to clean and hygienic conditions but structural and logistical issues that plague the framework of the entire value chain of waste management in the state.
On Saturday, commercial, social, and economic activities were halted in Lagos State for two hours between 6:30 and 8:30 as the long-abandoned monthly environmental sanitation exercise, reintroduced by the state government, commenced. The compulsory monthly sanitation exercise is not a novel idea. For a long time, these monthly cleaning and sanitation rituals underpinned the state’s social and economic order.
As Lagos began to feel the strain and negative effects of the influx of Nigerians from other parts of the country into its, the administrators of what was then the seat of power of the country started devising means to deal with the surge in population of the city and address the social and economic challenges such rural-urban migration posed. In the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, the state was not planned or designed to accommodate the rapid population growth it was experiencing. So, when Nigerians started flocking to it for jobs, prospects, and greener pastures, the state was not just confronted by the challenges of infrastructural deficit but also by sanitation problems.
One of the first major challenges that confronted those tasked with managing the state’s affairs at the time was how to maintain a clean, neat, and healthy city, as the population explosion brought about serious sanitation and hygiene concerns.
This resulted in the introduction and enforcement of monthly cleaning exercises, which took place on the first Saturday of every month between 7:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. During the sanitation exercise, residents of the state were mandated to thoroughly clean their homes and surroundings, particularly their frontages and the drainages.
However, in 2015, a court ruled that the monthly sanitation exercise was illegal as it contravened the provision of the constitution that guarantees the movement of people. The court held that the restrictions of movement between 7am and 10am for the cleaning routine violate citizens’ freedom of movement. After the court ruling, the state government cancelled the exercise. In the years that followed the cancellation of the sanitation exercise, the complaints of deplorable and abysmal sanitary conditions across the state became pervasive and it has disturbingly intensified in recent months. These complaints are not the product of disgruntled and disenchanted political adversaries but a genuine concern and reasonable lamentation of troubled taxpaying residents who feel the government is not doing enough in the area of sanitation and waste management in the state.
While the issue of indiscriminate urination and open defecation are part of the unsettling sanitation challenges that the state is grappling with, general waste management is at the centre of the state’s environmental and sanitary conundrum. It is not uncommon to find heaps of refuse at vital intersections, or a dumpster overflowing with dirt at major bus stops. For months on end, residents have complained about how waste collectors go weeks without showing up, causing frontages of properties and streets to be littered with uncollected refuse while some are forced to turn to cart pushers and informal waste collectors, who are largely illegal, for reprieve. By the way, this shameful reality is not limited to poor communities and low-income suburbs, even swanky and highbrow neighbourhoods of affluent and high-net-worth individuals are encumbered by such disconcerting and harmful inefficiency.
The reintroduction and commencement of the monthly sanitation exercise have been heavily criticised and opposed, with many seeing the activity as nothing more than a vestige of the widely resented and deeply unpopular military regime and a worrisome move by the government to abdicate its responsibilities. Away from the criticism and the pushback the revival of the routine as received, the question here to ask is can it really solve the troubling waste management situation in Lagos? Is restricting movement in a city of over 20 million people and forcing residents to stay indoors in the name of environmental cleanup every once a month the solution to decade-long waste management problems?
Many do not believe the reintroduction of the exercise will in any way address the problem, if anything they believe it will only worsen it. The challenge of waste collection and disposal is not so much about social factors or individual disposition to clean and hygienic conditions but structural and logistical issues that plague the framework of the entire value chain of waste management in the state, starting from the collection, to disposal and recycling. Mandatory sanitation exercise is not the panacea to chronic undercapacity and jarring inefficiency when it comes to waste management in the state.
The residents of the state clean and tidy up their surroundings from time to time without being compelled by the government. The suffocating foul smell that clings to the air in the city and its general dirtiness and untidiness are mainly the result of poor waste collection and processing. The wastes gathered by the residents from cleaning and clearing their homes are left on the streets and even major roads with no one to collect and properly dispose of them. These wastes, in many cases, end up getting strewn by the breeze all over the roads and sidewalks or wash back into the drainages from which they were excavated and block them.
One aspect of the waste management problem that is often overlooked or barely spoken about is how local politics contributes to the scourge. Many of the private waste management companies under the Private Sector Participation (PSP) operators licensed by the Lagos Waste Management Authority (LAWMA) for door-to-door domestic and commercial waste collection are owned by politicians and party loyalists who do not have the capacity, technical know-how and manpower needed to operate an efficient, reliable and advanced waste management service. They largely don’t see the licence given to them by the government to manage waste collection and disposal as part of being a critical player in the environmental sanitation ecosystem of the state.
For them, it is nothing more than a reward and compensation for being loyal members of the ruling party and working for its consolidation and retention of power in the state. If the motivation to keep their licences is their assured fealty to the party and working for it to actualise its goals at the polls why then should they bother putting in the consistent arduous and painstaking work needed to achieve a clean, neat, and aesthetically pleasing city? If their loyalty to the party is all that is needed to enjoy such a destructive patronage network then they will have no other incentives to serve the people diligently and dutifully which is what is required of them as operators of a waste management company. Since they act at the behest of the government, which rationalises and legitimises their incompetence and impunity, they have now morphed into a powerful and fearsome cabal that cannot be dislodged or dismantled by the state government even if it wants to.
Breaking and dismantling the private waste collection cabal is one of the major steps the state government must take if it is indeed serious about solving the waste management problem in the state. Waste management contracts and licenses should not be the instruments of compensation for entitled party loyalists. They should be given to visionary and imaginative people who have the wherewithal and capacity to do the job excellently. It is not something that should be used to “settle” local party leaders (this is another downside of the almost total state capture of Lagos by the APC). The government should also devolve waste management responsibility to the local councils as is done in almost every megacity in the world.
Furthermore, the government, according to the commissioner of environment and water resources, said it has put in place some robust and efficient initiatives and embark on structural changes to manage wastes in the state which include banning single use plastics, converting Olusosun landfill to energy, and deploying biogas facilities in our markets, and also partners with some stakeholders like Lafarge to turn waste into valuable resources, while empowering “young innovators with technology to improve sanitation access”. These initiatives and structural changes in the approach to waste management are laudable but they cannot be said to have had a convincing positive impact on the overall sanitation conditions of the state. Refuse is still left by the roadside or the median for days and dumpsters are constantly overflowing with dirt and debris creating the perfect conditions for diseases.
The government argument that monthly sanitation exercise does not in anyway replace systemic and structural reforms sounds reasonable and logical at face value, but when there is no tangible and concrete evidence to show that fundamental and structural waste management issues that plague the state for years have been wholly addressed by the government and that the real or imagined self-indulgence, unhygienic disposition and unseemly creed of the people are the major reasons for the deplorable sanitary conditions across the state, then the government reintroduction of monthly mandatory sanitation exercise amount to egregious dereliction of duties, passing the buck to the people and absolving itself of the most basic but exceedingly important responsibility making sure the city is clean and tidy.
Hardly had the voice of those who point out the absurdity and misplacement of priority of the state government’s reintroduction of monthly mandatory sanitation exercise quietened than the reality of their concern began to manifest. After yesterday’s sanitation exercise, most of the dirt, refuse and debris from the cleanup have been washed away by the rain that fell last night all through the early hours of today.
