How it started?
Babajide Sanwo-Olu, Lagos State Governor issued directives following the flood that ravaged parts of the State.
Dear Lagosians,
I have directed an immediate scale-up of waste evacuation across Lagos following the recent build-up of refuse in some parts of our state.
LAWMA, LASEPA, and the Ministry of Environment are currently working around the clock. We have deployed extra trucks and personnel to clear the backlogs across all affected neighbourhoods. You should already see progress on the streets and we will not stop until our city is completely clean again.
Lagos generates over 13,000 tons of waste every single day. Managing this requires a massive effort but our determination to fix the current challenge is absolute.
As we continue this cleanup, I ask for your partnership. Please bag your waste properly and avoid dumping refuse in drainage channels or on the roads.
We are fully on top of this situation. Let us work together to keep Lagos clean and safe for everyone.
Babajide Sanwo-Olu
GRV replies
Your Excellency, unsurprisingly, this statement is an admission of failure, not a solution.
Lagosians do not need periodic emergency evacuations of mountains of refuse. What they need is a functional waste management system that prevents waste from accumulating in the first place.
For years, residents have endured overflowing dumps, uncollected refuse, blocked drainage channels, and worsening environmental conditions despite billions of naira allocated to environmental management.
The fact that you now have to “direct an immediate scale-up” after waste has already overwhelmed communities is an utter failure of leadership.
Indeed, Lagos generates over 13,000 tonnes of waste daily today, just as it did yesterday, last month, and last year. This is not a surprise. It is a known reality that should be planned for through efficient collection, waste sorting, recycling infrastructure, transfer stations, waste-to-energy investments, and transparent performance management of operators.
Like your commissioner, you cannot continue to shift responsibility to citizens to “bag their waste properly” when many communities are left without reliable and affordable waste collection services. Rightly, Citizens have a responsibility to dispose of waste properly, but government has an even greater responsibility to provide the infrastructure and systems that make proper disposal possible.
Lagos cannot continue operating reactive clean-up exercises and public relations statements whenever refuse piles become impossible to ignore.
Lagos deserves a modern, accountable, and sustainable waste management system: one that measures success not by the number of trucks deployed after a crisis, but by the absence of the crisis itself.
Again, Your Excellency, after seven years in office, why is Lagos still battling a problem that should have been solved through competent planning, execution, and oversight?
I guess the answer is obvious: if e didn’t dey, e didn’t dey.
#OURLAGOS
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Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour
Lagos Commissioner for Environment replies GRV
Dear Gbadebo @GRVlagos
A lot of people are genuinely concerned about the waste situation in parts of Lagos, and that concern is understandable. Waste is not something you can talk around. If refuse is sitting on your street, beside your market, close to your bus stop, or inside the drainage near your house, the only thing that matters to you is that it should be removed. And that is fair.
But it may also help to explain the scale of what is being managed, and what is actually being done.
Lagos generates about 13,000 tonnes of waste every day. Not weekly. Every day. In May alone, LAWMA and PSP operators evacuated about 418,500 tonnes of waste across the state, which comes to an average of about 13,200 tonnes daily. That is not a small operation. It involves hundreds of PSP operators, public waste teams, transfer and disposal operations, street sweepers, enforcement teams, customer service staff, drivers, loaders, supervisors and monitoring officers working across a very large and difficult city.
Just to mention, during the 2026 Hajj, Saudi Sanitation Authorities announced that a total of over 472 tons of waste were generated from Mina and Muzdalifah. This is total waste generated by pilgrims all over the world in 5 days.
Still, nobody is pretending that everything is fine everywhere. Some communities have had delays. Some PSP operators have not performed well. Some routes have grown beyond the capacity that was originally assigned to them. In some areas, road access is poor. During the rains, movement into disposal sites can become slower. Trucks break down. Diesel and spare parts are expensive. Payment compliance is also weak in many places, and when people do not pay for waste service, the operators struggle to maintain trucks, pay crews and keep to schedule. These are not excuses but the harsh realities that have to be fixed.
That is why LAWMA has been reviewing weak routes, replacing and sanctioning underperforming operators, increasing monitoring, and deploying evacuation teams to pressure points. As of last month (May), 442 PSP operators were active across Lagos while 27 routes were under review for service improvement. LAWMA also received 474 complaints and service requests that month, which are now part of how the agency is identifying weak spots and following up on operator performance.
There is also a daily blackspot operation that many people do not see unless it is happening near them. LAWMA clears 3,000 black spots every day across 57 routes. These are the road medians, market edges, illegal dumping points, bus stops, setbacks and open spaces where people keep dropping waste outside the normal collection system. Some are cleared in the morning and abused again by night. That is one of the hardest parts of the job.
This is why enforcement has become more serious. In 2025, LAWMA recorded 1,023 incidents of illegal dumping and other waste violations across the state. Out of these, 447 cases were referred for prosecution. The surveillance teams also identified 431 scavengers and reconciled 145 properties with their assigned PSP operators. The data showed that much of the illegal dumping happens between midnight and early morning, and the waste is not only household refuse. It includes construction debris and even hazardous waste in some cases.
So when people say “just clear it,” we agree. It must be cleared. But we also have to stop the same locations from being turned back into dumpsites again and again.
Street sweeping is another big part of the work. Lagos has thousands of sweepers working across hundreds of routes, including highways, medians and major public corridors. This work starts very early, and it is not easy work. Some areas are swept daily, but once people keep littering from vehicles, markets, shops and buses, the same routes look dirty again within hours. That is why the long-term answer cannot be sweeping alone. We need better behaviour, stronger enforcement, more mechanised sweeping on strategic roads, and safer working conditions for the sweepers.
The bigger reform is infrastructure. Lagos cannot continue with the old collect-and-dump model. That is why construction is ongoing for Transfer Loading Stations to replace the old landfill operations at Olusosun in Ojota and Solous III in Igando. These will be supported by Material Recovery Facilities in Ikorodu and Badagry, so waste can be moved out of the centre of the city to modern facilities where it can be sorted, recovered, recycled and repurposed.
The Olusosun system is expected to move about 2,500 tonnes of waste daily to the Ikorodu MRF, while the Solous III side is expected to move about 1,500 tonnes daily to the Badagry recovery facility. The target for this transition is 6 months. Once completed, it should reduce pressure on the old dumpsites, improve the flow of waste evacuation, reduce congestion around disposal points and give Lagos a more serious recovery and recycling platform.
There is also the organic waste side, which is very important because a large part of Lagos waste is food and market waste. The Ikosi Fruit Market Biodigester has now been launched to treat organic waste closer to source and convert it into useful outputs like biogas, electricity and fertiliser. The plan is to replicate that model in other markets that generate high volumes of organic waste, instead of moving everything across the city to landfill.
So yes, the complaints are valid. Some backlogs should not have happened. Some residents have not received the service they deserve. Some operators have disappointed. There is no need to deny any of that.
But the fuller picture is that waste is being evacuated daily, black spots are being cleared daily, operators are being monitored, weak routes are being reviewed, illegal dumping is being prosecuted, street sweeping is ongoing, and new infrastructure is being built to change the system from the ground up.
Government has a duty to keep improving the system. Residents, markets, estates and businesses also have a duty to use the system properly and stop illegal dumping. Both things are true.
Lagos is not where it should be yet. But it is not standing still either. The work now is to clear what has built up, fix the routes that are failing, hold operators accountable, and complete the infrastructure that will move Lagos from dumping to sorting, recovery, recycling, energy and circular economy.
So, for your nomadic self to jump on the Governor’s release for your political agenda without talking solutions speaks to who you really are.
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Tokunbo Wahab
GRV fires back
Mr. Wahab,
Impact is felt, not explained in 1,578 words.
Your plastic policy has failed.
Your environmental policy, if one truly exists, has been ineffective.
Your waste management policy has been an unmitigated disaster.
The only area where you have consistently delivered is the demolition of the hard earned properties and livelihoods of ordinary citizens.
Not to mention your Bigotry and Gaslighting.
You have lost the moral authority to remain in office.
You should resign.
Today.
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Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour
Wahab retaliates
Dear Chinedu @GRVlagos
I have no interest in descending into the mudslinging and distractions you appear to thrive on. My focus remains on the important work before us - supporting the efforts of the Lagos State Government to ensure the safety, well-being, and prosperity of Lagosians.
If being committed to public service, good governance, and the protection of the interests and heritage of Lagosians is what you choose to describe as bigotry, then I make NO APOLOGIES for standing firmly by those principles. Public service is not a tea party - but how can you know what it entails? Nemo dat quod non habet.
For the sake of clarity, I would advise you, in your saner moments, to acquaint yourself with my record in public service - from my appointment as Special Adviser on Education to Mr. Governor in 2019 to my present tour of duty at the Ministry of Environment and Water Resources. The record is public, and it speaks for itself.
As for the labels and accusations, I will leave others to judge them on their merits. I have no intention of engaging in personal attacks or trading insults with a political nomad driven by ignorance and needless hatred.
I wish you all the best.
TW
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Tokunbo Wahab
GRV fires back
Typical. So typical of the APC. Once they lose the argument, they retreat into hate mongering, ethnic slurs, and divisive rhetoric.
The names are Gbadebo, Chinedu, Patrick RHODES-VIVOUR, Take your pick of any of the three and let's focus on the work you were entrusted to do.
Wahab, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but not only have you been the worst Commissioner for Environment this state has seen, you have also been one of the most irresponsible, unbecoming occupants of public office.
Again, you are not fit for public office.
As I told you in 2024, for the next couple of months try an DO YOUR DAMN JOB!!!
Ẹgbọn If you cant , you should resign.
Today.
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Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour
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