Commissioner for the Environment and Water Resources, Tokunbo Wahab has charged residents not to await the declaration of movement restriction before voluntary embracement of voluntary cleanliness of their environment.
He made the charge while reacting to questions on when the state government will commence the restriction of movement on the last Saturday of every month.
Said he: We all need to imbibe the culture of cleaning our environment for a few hours every Saturday and not waiting until the state declares a particular month for general sanitation or restriction of movement before acting appropriately.
“What the government is saying is to let us see how residents can set aside one Saturday of each month to take care of our environment; It costs us nothing and that is the thought behind the bringing back of the sanitation exercise. Let us start building that culture that we were building before the disruption all over again” he said.
According to him, the decision to bring back environmental sanitation was made by the Lagos Executive Council members chaired by the Governor and his Deputy. It was a well-thought-out decision that had to go to the Ministry of Justice for the advice of the Attorney General for over a year now.
“it is about trying to build a culture of waste management, the way we have built a culture of excellence. A culture where Lagosians would know that sacrificing one or two hours once a month to fix our environment is not a bad idea; we say to ourselves in our holy books that cleanliness is next to godliness” he added.
He said Waste management is a culture globally and if a country wants to manage the issue around municipal solid waste, then the country must be willing to build a culture adding that developed countries had come to the realization years ago, the same way Lagos did some years ago too.
He said in countries like the UK, there are different colours of refuse bins such as blue , black, green and they serve different purposes saying Lagos was building that culture until some years back when a citizen within his rights sought a court order to halt it.
He explained that the court order was not against the environmental sanitation but with the question of the law and the restriction saying these are the fundamental human rights issues.
He stressed that the State lost the case at the High Court and appealed through the current Attorney General of the State who was the Solicitor General of the State then added that the state won at the Court of Appeal eventually.
He stated further that after the State won the matter, the state was supposed to continue with the monthly Environmental Sanitation Exercise but dropped the ball and moved on stressing that this singular decision reversed the gains with respect to building a culture for waste management.
He said in the past two to three years, the government decided to re-embrace the situation, saying there is no court order holding the state back as such the government thought it is necessary to start building the culture again.
Wahab said the culture had continued in markets every Thursday from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. where by no market in the state operates instead they carry out the environmental sanitation exercise saying as the exercise had never been disrupted in the markets, it wants a replication across every home.
He said if Lagos has an existential challenge about how sanitation has to work, then it must find an out-of-the-box way of trying to solve the problem stressing that the State Government is not trying to abridge the right of residents
He added that some people with recalcitrant behaviour have chosen to continually do what is wrong and the government would not allow things to go further south but ensure that residents stay back at home to clean up their environment for a few hours in month in order to build a culture.
He recalled that in the year 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, the whole world was “shut down” and people adapted to the use of face masks, vaccination requirements amongst others in response to an existential threat saying the afore mentioned was a tough decision just like the government’s decision for the people to imbibe proper sanitation practice.
“We know all over the world that municipal solid waste is a contextual narrative every now and then. People in London and New York experienced this challenge for months. They are the realities we have to contend with” he said.
“So, I’m sorry, we may have to find an out-of-the-box solution to enable us to say, let us do this once a month. Once the culture is built, then we have achieved the goal” he added.
He said earlier in the week, a bio digester plant to convert wastes to energy was commissioned in one the biggest fruit markets in the state, saying the government has another major one coming up in the next few months, hopefully that will take care of 4,000 metric tonnes of waste daily.
The Commissioner mentioned that LAWMA has over 100,000 bins to be distributed to residents urging residents to use the bins for the right purpose instead of using the bins to fetch water.
He reiterated that the government understands that the PSP operators have challenges now but LAWMA would continue to intervene on their behalf until the challenges are resolved.
He said the government would continue to enforce the law against all environmental infractions and prosecute people caught on the other side of the law.
According to him, “It doesn’t make sense to have any law if you are not able to enforce them. I have not made any new laws that came into the use of the environment. I believe stricter sanctions will be applied to some of these bad behaviours .
“I’m glad also to state to you that these laws are also being reviewed by the House of Assembly, so stricter sanctions will be added to some of these bad behaviors. There will not be any reason to come against the law because Lagos is not a Hobbesian state” he added.
