The attainment of environmental health remains a cardinal goal of the Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu administration. An offshoot of this quest is the Cleaner Lagos project being superintended by LAWMA…
The attainment of environmental health remains a cardinal goal of the Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu administration. An offshoot of this quest is the Cleaner Lagos project being superintended by LAWMA. Managing Director of LAWMA, Ibrahim Adejuwon Odumboni, speaks to Eromosele Abiodun and Segun James on the journey to a megacity
What we should remember very well is following the previous policy somersault, before 2015, LAWMA was moving with the Waste Management law until Visionscape came. So, when Visionscape came, LAWMA was then rested, but everything went to the side, LAWMA was distorted and a lot of things changed. Because that was what helped to grow the way we managed waste in Lagos. If we generate 13,000 metric tons of waste per day, so each truck on average capacity 10 tons, that is what they will carry. So mathematically, you need 1,300 trucks to ply Lagos. So, now we are 850 plus PSP, now about 900 confirmed PSP that we regulate. Because we have 475 PSPs and each of them are required to have at least two trucks. If you multiply that by two, it is now 900 plus.
You can then move to the reorientation. We have a very broad designed advocacy program that we are rolling out from next week Monday. We will be going to different LCDAs and local governments to do sensitization. The Chief Judge gave us approval last week for 24 magistrate courts to be able to hear our cases on environmental infractions.
But you need to make sure that you have something done before you start enforcing it. Now that we have announced, the governor has gone back to announce that everybody should pay for their waste, don’t bring waste to the middle of the road. Don’t migrate with waste. So people after Lagos and when they are coming because they know that there are compactors in Lagos, they put their waste in the boot and then they drop it wherever they are working in Lagos.
The same thing will apply in Apapa when we recruited the community to police itself. You know in Apapa they have a lot of Hausa communities and of course, they police themselves. We have adopted the same thing in Badore last week because we know that that Badore and Ajah axis are a mixture of tribes. We have Ibo, Yoruba, Hausa and Awori people there. And then we have started seeing a lot of progress because if you use community policing, it is okay.
The good thing is that they are locally assembled, they were locally designed and the only parts you see that were imported were the ones that were not fabricated in Nigeria. But most of the parts were sourced in Nigeria. So we designed them, and we designed them in such a way that we put the needs of LAWMA into it.
Because our Governor is very great in understanding finance, so these are things that we have done way before this time and also we have planned around it. And in our design we looked at it, you know some times you buy a Benz, you can either buy a C class or buy an exclusive executive Class and you can buy a standard one.
So we invited him, and we asked him, what can we do to mitigate against this? Although initially I spoke to the governor and he said, I know an engineer that used to be with works and then came to LAWMA. I think he is retired now, he described him, so I came back and asked my team, who is this person? And they said Engineer Ogunbiyi, that he used to be head of Engineering. So, we went to look for him.
What we are doing because we are doing it in such a way that we order the bin and then people can come and buy from us. You can come and buy from us at a discounted price. If you go out there to buy a normal bin from maybe GP or any other producers in Nigeria, you will get an average of about 28 to 30,000 and the warranty is different.
Then you can start enforcing, you don’t have a bin in your house, the regulation says you must have a bin in your house. And then they know that they can readily buy that is okay. Not what we have now, some people have drums with no cover. The rain comes then it is filled with water. So, all those things we need to change. But Rome was not built in a day it is a gradual process.The current order is 40,000 and we have pre-order of about 21,000.
So, it is for the major roads. It is very clear where we are deploying these assets. None of them is allowed to go into the inner streets. We are not even going to borrow anyone to go and do the inner street job except it is critical. And it is also very important, like you said, in a situation when somebody reports that a PSP has not turned up for two weeks, if it is a performance issue, or a neglected issue, we need to be able to react as an agency.
In your question that you were talking about the underperformance of PSP, apart from the city monitor that will actually monitor the way they are performing, we have street captains now. Those street captains are youths across the streets. So in their streets, they are given five streets to monitor, they will report when PSP don’t turn up. It is work in progress, we have 377 wards in Lagos and currently, I can confidently say we are in 250 with the street captains.
So, if somebody gives you a loan and it is 7% cheaper than what you get elsewhere basically it is as if you are giving that person money. And that is one other thing that he said as well. So you can either take that loan to buy a Dangote truck or take it to buy a used truck. But because of the cost and because of the design, it is wiser for them to go for newer trucks rather than used trucks. Now that they are made in Nigeria, it is way cheaper.
So that shows a very good commitment. Then in terms of the Double Dino bin, he has experience when you first joined during Tinubu’s time. The governor did a lot with waste management. He was part of the people that formed and started LAWMA and the cleanup. So, he used to experience it, then to go and get tipper to carry waste. He was able to coach us very well on that double Dino and how you use it, not just garbage in garbage out. So that shows a lot of commitment.
Under Asiwaju administration, he has always had his input, even in Fashola administration too, he had his input. So, he is someone that see something grow. I cannot go to him and start giving him jargon, he understands what we do.
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