Just as well, Visionscape Sanitation Solutions (VSS) and Waste Collection Operators (WCOs), the old PSP operators, have reached some detente on the refuse war.
The Lagos prisoners of war (POWs), victims of the resultant environmental blight, can now heave a sigh of relief, hoping the refuse siege would lift soon.
Yet, after all said and done, Lagos is clearly dirtier than three years ago exactly today, when otherwise high-flying Governor Akinwunmi Ambode took over.
Indeed, many a harsh critic would gloat — and not without basis — that Lagos is dirtier today, than during Governor Bola Tinubu’s second term (2003-2007); and the eight-year stretch of Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola (2007-2015).
That is, on the refuse cum environmental wellness front, hopping back 12 clear years!
Quite a looming legacy — and it’s not pretty!
Yet, it is a rather stiff blight, for the governor has performed superlatively on other fronts.
But no matter how derisive or biting the refuse criticism becomes, it wouldn’t matter if it is fixed. That is what the governor should focus on. That is what would determine his legacy.
On the surface — and this resonates in the street — Ambode met a working system, and for whatever reasons, crippled it. Proof: refuse heaps, the ugly signposts of old Lagos, circa 2001, are back with a vengeance!
But looked at more closely, that conclusion doesn’t tell the complete story.
Yes, the PSP system had a good hang on refuse collection. But how sustainable was that system for a mega-city state, with fresh garbage from a thumping population, swollen daily by economic migrants nationwide?
That made imperative the Cleaner Lagos Initiative (CLI) — in any case, in the opinion of the Ambode government.
The CLI high point was the prospect of fresh capitalization, in waste clearing hardware: 600 brand new compactors and 900, 000 electronically tracked refuse bins, secure in the streets, being less prone to theft.
The advent of the enabling law, the Environmental Management and Protection law (now being reworked by the Lagos House of Assembly, because of the fierce opposition to CLI), was to signal a new dawn.
But it all ended a still-birth — or nearly so. The old PSP veterans, now dubbed WCOs, resisted their perceived elbow, by VSS, with alleged conspiracy by the Ambode government, out of the household waste segment.
VSS itself, overwhelmed as much by the fierce resistance as by the late delivery of its hardware — mainly the 600 brand new compactors — which were to be the market game-changers, looked far less nimble under pressure.
Then, uproar from shocked citizens. Suspected sabotage, as refuse piled up — in Malthus-speak — in geometrical proportions, while the refuse breakdown was still elementary in scope. Of course, the PSP also launched a legal challenge to VSS market entry.
The Lagos garbage war had broken out, with rare savagery — and Akinwunmi Ambode was the villain-in-chief!
The refuse-assaulted citizens — sight, smell, hearing and touch — were captured POWs, even as car tyres squelched heaps of spilled garbage from road medians; and stretched out skeins of sickening and smelly mats, on the road!
But even as affronted Lagos groaned under refuse, some new order was taking shape, though with barely anyone in the mood to notice.
From its mandate, VSS is charged with infrastructure upgrade, even as it competes with the WCOs on the refuse clearance front.
These core refuse chores include constructing more transfer loading stations, recycling facilities, biomass plants, leachate and waste treatment schemes, waste to energy plants, dumpsites and land-filled remediation.
That innovation points to the future of waste management in Lagos — an integrative process, which goal is to turn Lagos waste into wealth, doing that by best global practices.
With the present confusion and resentment, that might sound as arcane as they come. But it is the future of any modern city-state, intent on turning wastes into recycled assets, creating jobs along the way, in the best tradition of government-private sector partnership.
Still, between that future waste management utopia and the present grim challenges, there appears a gulf.
So, what should the Lagos government do, now that the rains are coming, to avert city-wide piles of uncleared refuse, becoming some push for water-borne epidemics?
Simple: accelerated clearance of refuse and faster turn-around of compactors, doing the rounds — some sort of refuse clearance emergency.
While city-wide feedbacks tend to suggest reduced piles, the situation is still far from what it was before the system broke down.
But that is little surprise. For starters, the WCOs are not as near-equipped, in sound compactors, as they should have been, which in the first instance, necessitated the CLI reforms.
Then, VSS’ anticipated new compactors are arriving in bits. Worse for capitalist morale: WCOs are infringing on VSS’ former household waste monopoly, in the spirit of the new waste entente.
Still, it is a thing to cheer that the government would appear getting a hang, once again, on the refuse situation. What to do now is fasten, by whatever means necessary, the turn-around time.
But something must be done — and done urgently: get rid of illegal dumpsites, particularly on medians, roundabouts and road junctions. These sites flared during the VSS-WCO turf war.
Now that there have been some operational agreements, the government should ensure they vanish, even if it means drafting security agencies, on a 24-hour surveillance, to arrest those responsible for these dumps.
Still, a lasting lesson from the refuse crisis: never take anything for granted; for the best systems often collapse with the least but routine neglects.
The strength of Lagos State, since 1999, has been its continuity — laudable and effective continuity, of winning policies, of which waste management was only a part. But see what havoc CLI’s sudden shock has caused!
Henceforth, Governor Ambode would do well to secure stakeholders’ consensus — or near so — before moving in to implement any policy, no matter how good on paper. This refuse fiasco teaches that stiff lesson.
As for political adversaries, hoping to cash in on Ambode’s refuse slip for negative electioneering pitch, all is fair in war!
Still, the governor, like 2nd Republic Alhaji Lateef Jakande, and immediate predecessor, Babatunde Fashola, SAN, before him, would appear to have done enough to earn re-election.
Even, after the first two years, Governor Bola Tinubu, who like the Biblical King David fought all the battles to establish the Lagos “kingdom”, was already showing enough fox-trot, to secure a second term. The refuse reforms, aside from massive infrastructure upgrade, topped in his golden score card.
For Ambode, therefore, failure on the refuse front is a dire legacy stain. It is absolutely no option!