Lagos: More waste, higher responsibility

THE waste problem in Lagos State appears to have become an intractable crisis. The situation highlights significant governance failures. Obviously, it is not an attribute of a megacity that Lagos claims to be.

These days, stinking refuse has become a permanent feature of the city’s landscape. Some residents say the refuse on their streets has not been cleared for three months. It is like Lagos is back to the early days of the Fourth Republic.

Its major dumpsite at Ojota has become an eyesore; it exhumes a noxious stink. Incidentally, the state has not been able to get accurate data on waste collection and disposal for decades. It only comes up with a bunch of excuses.

The Deputy Governor of the state, Obafemi Hamzat, laboured to explain the problem in a recent interview with Nigerian Info 99.3FM.

“We thought that we are generating 13,000 tonnes on a daily basis. It turns out we are generating about 17,000,” he said.

This difference between the estimated and actual volume of waste, Hamzat added, made it difficult for the government to plan and manage refuse collection.

Unfortunately, the state failed to realise early that many of the about 420 Private Sector Participants involved in waste collection no longer have the required number of functional waste collection trucks.

The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Lagos State Waste Management Authority, Muyiwa Gbadegesin, also gave his own excuses.

In a recent interaction with the media, he said the capacity of some landfills to receive waste had dwindled because they were approaching the end of life.

The situation, he added, was worsened by flooding of access roads and disposal platforms.

Other operational challenges include rising operational costs such as high diesel prices and rapid urbanisation. The population of Lagos, now estimated at between 22 million and 24 million, is far higher now than it used to be.

The worst is that frustrated residents illegally dump refuse on the roadside or inside the drainage channels when the PSP operators are not forthcoming.

Some patronise cart-pushers who collect the waste and dump it in unauthorised places. This poses environmental and health hazards in the city.

No doubt, the problem has overwhelmed LAWMA and PSP collectors.

To strengthen waste collection operations, the state government reportedly ordered 100 trucks. But rather than arriving in July as planned, the delivery is said to have been delayed to September.

This invariably means the current waste collection challenges in the state will still linger for some time.

Lagos must find a sustainable way of containing waste in the state. Former governor Raji Fashola managed this problem well by introducing the PSP arrangement. It worked until his successor, Akinwumi Ambode, came and scuttled the whole arrangement.

The state should go back to what worked under Fashola. It should come out with innovative measures on waste management.

There should be sincere and open partnership with competent private-sector operators.

Accurate and reliable data is important for effective waste management.

Lagos should study the National Policy on Solid Waste Management and implement it fully. It proposes a sustainable framework to transform Nigeria’s poor waste record.

The integration of technology into the waste management system will also help. In the United Kingdom, for instance, Greyparrot, a startup, uses AI to monitor and improve waste sorting and recycling processes.

Indore, in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India, effectively tackled its severe garbage and waste problems by using GPS-tracked trucks to collect waste from every home every day.

Hence, Indore has been ranked as India’s cleanest city for eight years in a row.

Gladly, Lagos plans to replace ageing landfills with recycling and waste-to-energy plants. There is one already at the Ikosi Fruit Market in the Ketu area. It converts organic waste into biogas, electricity, and fertiliser.

Gbadegesin added that the agency was developing two major transfer loading stations at Olusosun and Solous, and that material recovery facilities were being developed in Ikorodu and Badagry to process bulk waste.

It is hoped that these measures will eventually solve the state’s waste management crisis.

The current situation is simply unacceptable.

Source: punchng.com

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