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Over the years, I have quietly observed a disturbing trend across Lagos: the gradual transformation of our major highway intersections and medians into unauthorised refuse dumps. Places such as Orile-Iganmu, Mile 2, Igando, Ajah, and numerous others now have household waste, construction debris, and commercial refuse routinely dumped right in the centre dividers of multi-lane expressways. It is difficult to reconcile the sight of tonnes of garbage smouldering in the middle of roads that were constructed with billions of taxpayers’ naira, while the state government appears powerless—or unwilling—to stop it.
We have a Commissioner for the Environment who is widely regarded as energetic and committed, yet this particular menace seems to have escaped serious, sustained attention. How do we explain citizens (and sometimes commercial waste collectors) treating the very heart of our highways as a landfill? Enforcement is almost non-existent, and the few attempts at clearance are temporary; within days, the mounds return.
A recent episode perfectly illustrates the abdication of responsibility at the local level. The Chairman of Ibeju-Lekki Local Government publicly shamed a community by posting photographs of illegal dumping on social media, as if the residents had invented the practice out of malice. One is left wondering: whose primary duty is it to provide accessible, regular, and reliable waste-collection infrastructure? Is it not the local government chairman himself? By highlighting the symptom while ignoring the absence of functional refuse-collection points, designated transfer stations, or scheduled evacuation in many of these communities, he unwittingly exposed his own failure rather than the community’s indiscipline.
This is the same Ibeju-Lekki axis that hosts the Lekki Free Trade Zone, the Dangote Refinery, the Lekki Deep Sea Port, the Lagos Free Zone, and a growing cluster of multinational manufacturing firms. These mega-projects generate enormous tax and levy revenue for both state and local governments, yet surrounding communities are left without basic waste-management infrastructure, epileptic power supply (while the companies run captive plants), and little visible reinvestment. When citizens have no lawful place to dispose of their waste and no reliable evacuation service, illegal dumping becomes the rational—albeit destructive—response.
History has shown that neglect of this magnitude does not end quietly. When communities eventually push back against the combination of environmental degradation and exclusion, neither private security nor government rhetoric will contain the fallout.
I therefore call on responsible media houses—print, broadcast, and digital—to undertake proper investigative reporting on the state of waste-management infrastructure (or the lack thereof) along these economic corridors, the contracts awarded for waste evacuation, the utilisation of ecological and environmental levies paid by the large corporations, and the specific actions (or inaction) of the responsible ministries, agencies, and local government authorities. The citizens of Lagos deserve transparency, accountability, and, above all, functional systems that justify the taxes and levies they pay daily.
A city that aspires to be Africa’s model megacity cannot continue to tolerate expressways that double as open dumps. The time for cosmetic clean-ups and social-media grandstanding is over; what we need is systemic, enforceable, and inclusive waste-management governance. #@channelstv ,@tvcnewsng ,@ARISEtv @AIT_Online @seunokin ,@ruffydfire @FemiAkandeTVC
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