By way of Erasmus Ikhide
The visible and olfactory tragedy of a Mega-Town
No customer arriving in Lagos can in all probability pass over its surprising, breathtaking forget. Site visitors chaos used to be as soon as regarded as its 2d nature, an unlucky made from its frantic geographic enlargement and sprawling inhabitants.
On the other hand, this infamous gridlock has now been violently overtaken by way of a much more pervasive and nauseating illness: the proliferation of indiscriminate waste dumps festering around the city with out well timed or systematic evacuation.
From Badagry to Mile 2, from Mile 2 right down to Orile, stretching around the congested veins of Iyana Iba to Egbeda, and from Oshodi right down to Agbado-Ijaye, the panorama bears the deep scars of environmental abandonment.
Each the mainland and Lagos Island—maximum particularly ancient, high-density business hubs like Idumota, Akpongbon, and their claustrophobic environs—have systematically devolved into enormous environmental failures as a result of unmitigated, indiscriminate waste dumping.
You may be actually stunned at how grimy those spaces have turn into. Either side of the roads, the medians, and the once-functional drainage channels are littered, choked, and buried below business and home refuse.
Different high places equivalent to Lekki and Victoria Island is also much less littered at the floor, however even their number one thoroughfares cry out for pressing consideration and structural repairs.
For those who juxtapose what is going on on this self-proclaimed “Centre of Excellence” with the visionary, enormous building strides of the Lateef Jakande years, one is certain to confront agonizing, existential questions: Is Lagos in fact operating? What is going on to our native governments? Why can’t they evacuate elementary waste? Above all, is anyone nonetheless presiding over the state executive?
The Golden Benchmark: The Jakande Generation vs. Provide Smash
To grasp the intensity of our present desolation, one should revisit the ancient governance benchmark set by way of Alhaji Lateef Jakande right through his management as governor of Lagos State from 1979 to 1983. The inhabitants of Lagos used to be already rising impulsively on the time, which overstretched to be had infrastructure as public faculties had been seriously congested.
As an alternative of providing never-ending excuses or commissioning superficial media occasions, the Jakande management revolutionized public training by way of development loads of reasonably priced number one and secondary faculties to abolish the worrying and dehumanizing morning and afternoon shift techniques.
His executive built hundreds of practical, low cost school rooms grouped into primary vicinity faculties and complexes throughout native executive spaces like Mushin, Agege, Ipaja, Apapa, and Epe. Notable legacy tutorial hubs established right through this era come with, the distinguished Tolu Colleges Complicated in Ajeromi-Ifelodun, the Amuwo-Odofin Colleges Complicated, the Okota Colleges Complicated and the Odu Abore Number one Faculty in Mushin.
Moreover, Jakande’s management established Basic Medical institution zones in every single place the state with the company assurance of loose healthcare for the populace. In a testomony to his unequalled administrative imaginative and prescient, his executive constructed extra libraries in Lagos State than the entire governors blended since 1999, and he made historical past as the primary governor to give a billion-naira state funds in Nigeria.
In upper and technical training, his management based Lagos State College (LASU) to offer upper finding out alternatives for Lagos citizens. He relocated and expanded the Lagos State School of Training (LACOED/now Adeniran Ogunsanya School of Training) to coach skilled lecturers, and based Lagos State Polytechnic (LASPOTECH) to spice up technical and vocational manpower around the federation.
Devoted instructor coaching schools and technical faculties had been additionally arrange throughout other divisions to impulsively provide certified educators and professional employees.
Institutional Decay and Administrative Inertia
As of late, the distinction between that golden technology of purpose-driven management and the present dispensation below Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu is stark, painful, and profoundly embarrassing.
Established secondary faculties and tertiary establishments—together with Lagos State College as its flagship, more than one housing estates in isolation (equivalent to Agbado-Ijaiye and Agege-Abesan), and significant arterial roads—are languishing in terminal forget.
Even supposing previous establishments just like the School of Training and Lagos Polytechnic had been administratively upgraded into full-fledged universities (particularly, the Lagos State College of Training [LASUED] and the Lagos State College of Science and Era [LASPOTECH]), the overarching bodily atmosphere and structural repairs have deteriorated sharply.
Native executive councils had been rendered toothless, structurally emasculated, and entirely incapacitated. Why can’t they evacuate waste? Why are our business nerve facilities buried below decomposing refuse? Why has a state blessed with immense internally generated income degenerated right into a monument of administrative inertia?
Governance Failure: Sanitation, Infrastructure, and Grassroots Paralysis
When an city centre of worldwide importance collapses below the load of its personal refuse, the failure is neither unintentional nor brief; it’s structural and systemic. The core disaster of recent Lagos lies within the systematic dismantling of native governance buildings.
In any practical federation, the native executive tier is uniquely situated to take care of localized sanitation, tenement control, and neighborhood-level waste assortment. But, below the existing management, native councils had been diminished to mere administrative ciphers, financially emasculated and stripped of the autonomy required to stay their communities blank.
Personal Sector Participation (PSP) waste control operators battle below crippling bureaucratic bottlenecks, behind schedule subsidies, and a loss of infrastructural backing. The Lagos State Waste Control Authority (LAWMA) has confirmed in large part incapable of assembly the refuse disposal calls for of a surging mega-city inhabitants.
As a result, primary highways, secondary roads, and side road corners had been transformed into unauthorized, everlasting waste dumps. This environmental degradation without delay threatens public well being. Rainwater washes poisonous leachate from those rotting refuse lots without delay into open drainage channels, polluting the lagoon, contaminating the water desk, and exposing hundreds of thousands of citizens to preventable waterborne and airborne sicknesses. This is a slow-motion public well being emergency taking place in huge sunlight.
The Distinction of Priorities: Substance vs. Spectacle
Governance should be measured by way of the tangible high quality of lifestyles it delivers to the strange citizen, no longer by way of flashy billboards, high-sounding slogans, or stage-managed media commissioning ceremonies.
When faculty kids in Agege and Ipaja should buckle down and do flooded, waste-clogged gutters to achieve crumbling school rooms with leaking roofs, the promise of a “Sensible Town” is published as a merciless phantasm. When investors in Idumota and Akpongbon habits their day-to-day trade surrounded by way of towering mountains of rubbish, the state executive’s claims of financial excellence ring hole.
Jakande’s management proved that with self-discipline, prudent useful resource control, and profound empathy for the average guy, enormous demanding situations might be conquer inside of a brief span of 4 years. He didn’t construct his legacy on empty media optics; he constructed it on enduring bodily infrastructure, powerful establishments, and a real dedication to public welfare.
Deepening the Critique: City Making plans and Social Forget
The regression of Lagos is additional reflected within the state of its mass housing initiatives. Throughout the 2nd Republic, Jakande’s management built over 30,000 low cost housing devices throughout numerous places—together with Ijaiye, Dolphin, Oke-Afa, Abesan, Amuwo-Odofin, Ipaja, and Iba.
Those communities had been designed to offer refuge and dignity to low-income earners, civil servants, and the operating magnificence. As of late, many of those similar housing estates are plagued by way of infrastructural decay, failing sewage techniques, unpaved inner roads, and encroaching business shanties.
The disconnect between the ruling elite in Alausa and the on a regular basis realities of strange Lagosians hasn’t ever been wider. Whilst billions are funneled into elite ego massaging beautification initiatives, densely populated settlements at the mainland are left to rot in dirt.
The failure to handle elementary public infrastructure—starting from public libraries to well being facilities and technical faculties—has created an atmosphere the place early life unemployment, social depression, and concrete decay thrive unchecked.
Reinventing the Centre of Excellence
Lagos State stands at a vital ancient crossroads. It stays the plain business heartbeat of West Africa and a monetary engine room that the remainder of the continent seems as much as.
It can’t proceed to wallow because the capital of dirt, structural decay, and administrative indifference.
Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu should be referred to as to reserve. The present environmental tragedy is an plain indictment of government capacity.
The state calls for a direct, complete, and competitive overhaul of its waste control structure, the entire recovery of true native executive monetary and operational autonomy, and a go back to the disciplined, people-centric philosophy of governance exemplified by way of Alhaji Lateef Jakande.
The Town of Excellence merits true management, rigorous city making plans, and environmental dignity. Historical past is staring at, and the judgment of the folks will likely be unsparing.
*Erasmus Ikhide contributed this piece by way of: ikhideluckyerasmus@gmail.com
Inform: +2348035032123. WhatsApp best.