There is a virtue to the credit of governance in Lagos. The environment has been transformed to the admiration of all to the extent that many in the country now copy the good deed to turn their own enclaves into better cities and states.
Recent commissioning of the Agege Waste Transfer Loading Station (TLS) has brought into sharp relief the yeoman effort exerted by Environment Commissioner Tunji Bello, with his two bosses, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and Governor Babatunde Fashola, to bring about a turn-around on the deplorable Lagos environment.
The Agege TLS is the third in the ambitious list of 20 stations earmarked to cover the entire state. It has been built to serve Ikeja, Ifako-Ijaye, Agege, Ojokoro and Orile. TLS construction is only one of three special phases of the concerted effort to bring filth-menace under control in Lagos. The other two are the use of dumpsites and the building of waste recycling plants.
At the commissioning, Governor Fashola lucidly and expertly explained that solid waste management has gone beyond simply collecting and transporting refuse. It has become a mega enterprise, playing a paramount role in urban development and governance.
There goes a trademark. They always know what they are talking about. These Lagos handlers have fully comprehended the problem they are up against and have been able to design the solution from a position of competence. Also, they do not spare expenses and are not deterred by the danger inherent in enforcement. They show themselves to be people of courage. I think people even call one of them The Last Man Standing after a fierce battle then-extant President Olusegun Obasanjo waged to bring entire South-west zone into the PDP.
Tinubu, Fashola and Tunji Bello have made the difference in the matter concerning Lagos environment. The joy in their foray is that they are so informed about the problem and that they deftly access or create skills and expertise needed to confront the challenge. That is why they are winning where the military rulers woefully failed.
It was not that the military didn’t do a thing. Their best was not good enough because they didn’t have a thorough knowledge of the problem or the solution. Happily, the state has come a long way from those days of yore when the military held sway in Lagos. The giant metropolitan entity was a jungle city, covered in hills of rubbish and enveloped in great stench that oozed from the decomposing wastes.
Motor-parks, market places and downtown centres at Ojota, Oyingbo, Ladipo, Alaba, Ijora, Oshodi, Yaba, Marina etc, had their hidden vicinities turned into open toilets and dens of mischief.
Diseases were rampant and death from unsanitary environment was commonplace. The late social activist and leading light, Dr Tai Solarin of that era, regularly hit newspaper front-pages salvaging some of those dead bodies. It got so bad at a stage Lagos clinched the unflattering epithet of being the dirtiest capital in the world.
These gory environmental circumstances remained prevalent at the onset of this civilian dispensation in Lagos when Senator Bola Tinubu assigned Barrister Tunji Bello as commissioner for the environment. Work commenced. A body of new environmental rules was churned out. Where there is no law there is no offence. It became an offence, for example to throw garbage out of vehicles to the roads or sweep waste into gutters.
Close on the heel of law enactment were the recruitment and training of officers and men as environment law enforcers. Tens of thousands of sweepers and cleaners were also engaged to keep the Lagos streets spick and span. Thousands of workers were similarly employed to labour and build wastelands in Oshodi, Mile-Two, Ojota, Ketu, Yaba, Palmgrove, Ojuelegba, Marina, Apapa, Costain etc into gardens of flourishing trees and flowers. Major city streets and roads were also paved and planted with trees as boulevards in the making.
The battle to reclaim the environment also involved the creation of giant dumpsites all over the metropolis to which the huge hills of waste were hauled and incinerated. But in a state with ever-increasing population which generates refuse that rises by six to eight percent per annum, the dumpsites cannot be a final solution.
Government therefore had to rise to the occasion establishing Waste Transfer Loading Stations. One each had been built at Oshodi and Simpson (Island) before the one in Agege that we now celebrate. Four others are reported to be under construction simultaneously at Ogombo, Abule-Egba, Ishasi and Owutu. The Agege TLS has been built by 850 professionals and artisans in 14 months on a piece of land from which 165,000 metric tonnes of waste was evacuated.
The great efforts invested on regenerating the Lagos environment under the watch of Commissioner Bello have paid off handsomely. The megacity status has been enhanced. The infrastructure has been modernized. The ability to clean and beautify the state has been established. More jobs are created for the unemployed. More contractors are put to work.
We now have a state so environmentally stable it can easily demolish the influx of a plague like that by the Ebola Virus Disease which infected the state this year and was effectively repulsed. In the past the EVD would have reigned supreme in Lagos as it now does in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
The international community has also been very quick in recognizing the metamorphosis of Lagos into a world-class modern state to live in or visit as tourist or business persons. According to MasterCard’s Global Destination Cities’ Index, Lagos has today become the fourth most visited city in Africa with 1.3 million visitors this year.
In 15 short years, the massive environmental regeneration battle waged by Bola Tinubu, Babatunde Fashola and Tunji Bello has yielded happy dividends. Environmentally, Eko has become a better city to live in and a famous destination for tourists.
- Amupitan wrote in from Lagos.
