Bad road causes refuse build-up in Ikotun

In some parts of Lagos, beautiful flowers and lawns adorn the roads and streets as part of the Lagos mega city plan but it is not same for suburbs like Ikotun and Igando.

In these areas, instead of flowers and lawns, heaps of refuse in bags of different shapes and sizes are dumped in-between and by the sides of major roads, as a result of the poor state of the roads which prevents waste disposal vehicles from reaching most parts of these suburbs.

The Lagos Waste Management Authority (LAWMA) franchised the refuse collection to Private Sector Participation (PSP) operators.

Residents speak

Funmilola Adebisi, a resident of one of the suburbs, told NEXT that the PSP operators responsible for collecting the refuse do not come regularly, while the few street sweepers that serve the area attend to the major road only.

"The LAWMA-PSP refuse trucks do not come here regularly, especially at weekends," she said. "Even when they do, they don't get into most of the streets because of [the] bad roads in this area. People are used to dumping their refuse on the major road where it can be easily collected by LAWMA, especially those living where the road is very bad.

"Here at Ikotun, we only see few street sweepers, sweeping the major road only, as most of the other roads are bad. This makes this area look dirty all the time especially during this rainy season, unlike other better parts of Lagos where [the] roads are good.

I will like the state government to build more road lanes for us, so that we can have a cleaner environment like other parts of Lagos State."

Bamgbose Kehinde, another resident,, said that though officials of the waste management agency do not come around often, underdevelopment is a major reason the area is wearing its dirty look.

"Though there is a dump site at Igando, most of us do not have access to it due to the distance from our homes and the truck pushers worsen the situation with their high charges to dispose our refuse.

Where I live, the LAWMA truck can't get there because of bad road, so what we do is to dump it [the refuse] where they can have access to it," Mr. Kehinde said. "No matter how the street sweepers try to keep the street clean, the dirt from the bad roads will always dirty their work, so I think the government should do more roads for us, so that other problems relating to it can be solved as well."

LAWMA's response

According to the Managing Director of LAWMA, Oladimeji Oresanya most of the commercial PSP operators which handle the Ikotun and Igando areas do complain of the bad roads as reason for their poor services, and LAWMA does not accept such excuses because it wants only good service delivery for Lagosians.

"From the recent survey we carried out, we found out that 89 percent of Lagosians have access to our services, 65 percent are satisfied, while 35 percent are not. This means that we still have a lot of work to do and so we are going to sanction any PSP operator which is not meeting expectations especially in those areas," he said.

Mr. Oresanya also said that their monitoring team has been asked to use stringent measures, adding that PSP operators are transferred to new areas of operation when complains are lodged against them.

When NEXT tried to contact some of the commercial PSP operators, who are responsible for waste disposal in the area, it received no response. The telephone numbers given by these PSP operators for comments and complaints as posted on LAWMA's web site were not helpful as no response was received from them.

The telephone number given by Afo Ventures, the PSP operator which handles the Intercontinental Bank area of Ikotun Road as seen on LAWMA's web site, was said to be a wrong number when it was dialled.

Another PSP operator, Chrisgate Ventures, which handles some other parts of Ikotun and Igando picked the call but refused to comment on the issue.

Miravel Waste Management Limited, which handles the Jomes Filling Station area of Igando, Omolad Shopping Complex area of Egbeda, Obanla Palace Hotel area, LASU-Igando Road, Isheri, Synagogue Church of all Nations area, Ikotun, and other areas within the region did not pick their calls though the phone rang repeatedly.