- The Cleaner Lagos Initiative will deploy personnel and technology to lift the megacity
As Lagos continues to live up to the challenge of a megacity, one of the major hurdles is waste. To handle this, it has to embark on a paradigm shift. This involves not only adapting to the imperatives of new technology, but also the expertise of those who manage it.
Lagos has had, in the past decade and more, a system that involved the Lagos State Waste Management Agency (LAWMA) work with 350 companies under its Private Sector Participation (PSP) programme. They have contended with a city that has risen exponentially in population and continues to expand in size. Lagos has gained notoriety as the fastest growing city on the planet with 80 people flocking in daily without returning. Every human generates wastes, and it is not supposed to be a bad thing since it is part of what makes us human.
What is dangerous is not to have an answer to managing piles of waste. At a time, Lagos had no answer and every part of the metropolis piled with mountains of refuse, making the city a vast environmental sore of stench and dirt. Lagos became one of the worst places not just to live but to breathe.
Efforts have been made in the past decade and a half to reduce this and that was the background to the creation of LAWMA and its partnership with the PSPs. This worked and the city was grateful for initiatives that significantly pared the wastes and showed a metropolis on course to cleanliness. Refuse piles disappeared from parts of the neighbourhoods and so did obnoxious odours.
But the arrangement has worked for over a decade and has had to contend with a burgeoning population and increasing refuse. This has led to complaints around the city over the imperfections of the existing programme. This includes a certain magisterial arrogance of the PSPs, irregular and poor waste collection and bin placement and the chaos of the transfer loading stations. Billing system became chaotic and routes of companies tangled.
Incidentally, the partnership between the LAWMA and PSPs expired in 2016 just in time for the Akinwunmi Ambode administration to launch what has become known as the Cleaner Lagos Initiative. Under this plan, the government will use the services of a consortium that involves Nigerians and foreigners.
The consortium will bring in over 20 landfill and transfer loading station management vehicles, 590 new rear-end loader compactors, 140 operational vehicles and about 900,000 new bins. This new plan is powered by cutting-edge technology that will involve a control room where the bins and compactors can be tracked. Waste generated and disposed will be monitored. The existing PSPs will now take charge of commercial districts, including markets.
It is, as Governor Ambode has indicated, not merely about making Lagos clean, but also making Lagos profitable. Jobs will be available for 27,500 sanitation workers who are expected to be in every ward of the state, and ensure that dirt is not removed as a periodic affair but a daily engagement. For a state that spews out 13 metric tonnes of waste per day, a radical rather than incremental approach is necessary. That is what the Cleaner Lagos Initiative is pursuing.
To enable it work, the governor has initiated a bill that reviews and enhances existing legislation to provide a platform to turn the city into a big and salubrious city. If the state is involved in infrastructure change, on the verge of major transportation transformation with parks and a nightly vision of illumination on every street, then the present waste policy must adapt to the evolving view of Nigeria’s megacity.
