FRANKTALK
By Steve Nwosu
Sometime in December last, I stumbled on a TikTok post on lindaikeji blog by some lady, obviously an I Just Got Back (IJGB).
The only thing that stuck to me about her was her very prominent nose (nearly as prominent as mine), and the fact that she spoke good English.
The video was about how dirty and smelly Lagos had become, and why it wasn’t even worthy of anyone going there for Detty December. For her, it was not only the environment that was smelly, but also the people in the city – from Lekki to Ikoyi, Balogun Market etc.
Of course, many, like myself, who would defend Lagos (warts and all) with everything we’ve got, rose in defense of our city and its heritage, but there were thousands others who totally agreed with her, exposing even more filth about our mega city.
In fact, as a the time I exited the page that day, the post had garnered over 5,000 likes and about 1.6k comments, most of them supportive of her position.
More than a thousand seven hundred people had also shared the post.
Now, add those figures to those garnered by that ‘famous’ post by a certain social media influencer- Corps member serving in Lagos, and you’d begin to guage how so dissatisfied Lagos residents and visitors to the state are with the state of dirtiness and environmental ill-health that Lagos has fallen into.
So dirty that someone could even contemplate taking Detty December out of Lagos, where it originated and which has continue to give the concept its very vibe and essence.
Now, if we all agree that Lagos is dirty and could do with some drastic clean-up, why are we reluctant to put our money where our mouth is, and pay a token price for a clean Lagos – a harmless two hours every last Saturday of every month?
I’ve read of all manner of laws being quoted and court rulings being exhumed, simply because the Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu administration finally wants to do something about the filth, by reintroducing the monthly state-wide environmental sanitation exercise.
One of the arguments against the exercise, attributed to respected human rights lawyers and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Femi Falana, even argues that the exercise was not necessary, considering that the Lagos State Government had already budgeted a whooping N256 billion in the 2026 appropriation bill for the environment.
According to Falana, included in that huge sum are such subheadings as Urban Renewal and Waste Management, and since taxpayers’ money had already been voted to do the sanitation job, there was no need troubling the same taxpayers any further with an environmental sanitation exercise. Solid reasoning!
But then, how many of us would go sleep beside a mosquito- infested pond, simply because we have stocked up on anti-malaria drugs?
How many of us would go having reckless and unprotected sex simply because retroviral drugs are now available for free? Or that the National Health Insurance Scheme now gives expedited attention to STI patients anpatients living with HIV/AIDS? Of course, None!
When was the last time you left home without locking your doors, or parked your car at a public parking lot without doubly ensuring that the doors are properly locked, simply because there’re CCTV cameras everywhere, or because the anti-robbery squad just got its monthly allocation doubled?
Yes, Lagos has budgeted a humongous amount for safer environment and waste management, but the citizenry still have to play their part in ensuring a cleaner safer environment.
That is what this return of the monthly environmental sanitation exercise is all about.
Yes, even if Lagos re-introduces the Wole-Wole corps, those sanitary inspectors aren’t going to help wash your plates and soup pots, or rid your beddings of bedbugs. You still have a role to play.
Of course, I’m not impressed by the argument that rather that impose a restriction on movement, people should be allowed to clean their homes and surroundings at their convenience. No! That is what we have done since November 2016, when the Ambode administration, in obedience to a Federal High Court ruling, stopped the restriction of movement regime and abolished the compulsory monthly environmental sanitation exercise.
Ten years after, even the blind can see where it has landed Lagos in terms of cleanliness. Yet, some people have refused to agree that doing something the same way over and over would never produce a different result. Yet we all agree that we need a different result.
My late boss, Pastor Dimgba Igwe, would always say; when people show appreciable level of sound intelligence, you allow them use their initiative, but when they display a tendency to stray, then you make rules for them. That is why Sanwo-Olu is setting rules, because most Lagosians won’t clean their environment without compulsion.
Lagosians, like many Nigerians, have this tendency to take liberty of acceptable conduct whenever there’s no one beating them into line, especially where there are hardly ever any consequences for deliberately doing the wrong thing.
This is what plays out at traffic lights. Once there’re no traffic wardens, Road Safety officials or some koboko-brandishing military Rank and File standing by the road junction, everyone just runs the traffic light.
So, for the environmental sanitation exercise to have the desired impact, at least during these early days, there has to be a restriction on movement. And enforcement too. It won’t kill us.
Yes, there is a court order, and another petition before the Supreme Court, but the sanitation situation in Lagos has become an emergency case.
And we should not lose sight of the fact that law is meant for man, and not the other way round, especially when there is now an existential threat to Lagos and Lagosians over this environmental health hazard.
Ironically, we live in a Lagos where, every Thursday, the markets (including vulcanizers and other artisans along the streets) do not open shop until 10.00am, because their union decreed it. Those four hours are supposed to be used in cleaning up the markets and their shop surroundings. But because there is no enforcement, no such cleaning is actually carried out. Shop owners simply lock up shops, do some other things, while waiting for 10:00am to reopen their shops to the same filthy environment.
Similarly, we see markets controlled by Igbos, who are predominantly Christians (like the Trade Fair market) being shut for upwards of two weeks, to celebrate Christmas. Markets controlled by Muslims do likewise, though for a shorter stretches of time for Sallah and other such festivities. Nobody feels there’s any violation of any body’s rights in these instances. I’m unaware of anyone going to court to fight for the rights of Jehova’s Witnesses who do not celebrate Christmas like the rest of us Christians.
Similarly, anybody who is a frequent flyer on the country’s South East routes would also have noticed that airlines regularly cancel or reschedule their Monday flights for no other reason than the illegal sit-at-home order of the Biafran agitators. Although the state governments there are gradually winning the war against the sit-at-home, no human rights lawyer has gone to court to stop this worse case of violation of the freedom of movement rights. Both airlines and air travellers simply adjusted for the good and safety of all.
While Lagos state government is not the same as IPOB, one feels that the environmental sanitation challenge is an emergency situation that deserves the support and cooperation of all, rather than the current display of legal or intellectual rascality. Let us be real!
Now that the state government is asking us to sacrifice just two hours every last Saturday of the month to clean our environment, some people gripped by the wanderlust spirit are bursting their veins over it.
They forget that this restriction of movement has never been without exemption. There has always been a window for emergencies and essential service personnel to move around unmolested.
The only thing the government needs to do is to educate members of its taskforce to be mindful of essential services personnel.
I wouldn’t want a situation I experienced during the last general elections, when soldiers at a military checkpoint stopped me on my way to the office, and detained me for several minutes, refusing to agree that, as a journalist, I was on essential duty.
In fact, one of the soldiers, a woman, declared that all essential duty people wear uniforms, and since I was not in uniform, I couldn’t be providing any essential service. Her other colleagues agreed with her.
So, the state government must ensure that every taskforce team patrolling and enforcing the restriction of movement must have, at least, one officer who has a head on his shoulders, so that the law enforcers do not themselves become lawless.
LAST LINE
When Minister Dave Umahi attributed the flooding on the completed portions of the controversial coastal highway to blockages caused by the dumping of refuse into manholes, very few Nigerians believed. Of course, it was not without reason. The APC government has told so many tales and half-truths about that road that everything said about it now – from cost to date of completion, and even the reason for priotising the road, is taken with a pinch of salt.
Curiously, I am among the few who believed Umahi. Reason? I live in that hood and I have actually seen a cart pusher from the beach nearby empty his cart’s content – including a disused vehicle tyre, into a vandalized manhole. Don’t ask me why I didn’t pull over to stop him.
I live in a neighbourhood populated by a generous chunk of the nouveaux riches, many of whom have an overbloated sense of self-wort, exaggerated intelligence and entitlement mentality.
They are the ones that would drive a car for 3 straight years without ever registering it, and still be arguing with law enforcement officers whenever they’re pulled over. They’re the quickest to swipe out their cellphones to record their own tomfoolery on video, and instantly posting it without knowing it amounts to self indictment.
One was even genuinely surprised that police was threatening to arrest him over ‘ordinary weed’ (as in, Indian hemp), which he was smoking as he drove along the road. He boldly declared that only ‘coke’ not ‘weed’ was against the law. The arrogant ignorance had be speechless.
Now this same, money-miss-road ignoramus is the one that bluntl refused to pay for refuse disposal, insisting that he’d dispose it himself whenever he wished. But the problem was that he never ‘wished’ for two whole months. And the waste began to spill out of the bin, polluting the entire surrounding. He thought that owning a house meant he could live like a pig, unaware of the nuisance he constituted to his neighbours and the environment.
He always thought the world revolved around social media; always threatening to expose everything and everybody on social media. Completely unaware of the legal limitations to engagements on the social media space. Naivety has never been more arrogant!
But, as the Lagos State Government moves to radically clean up the environment, with this reintroduction of the monthly environmental sanitation exercise, it is the likes of this my former neighbour who ideally needs to be reined by society, that are now all over blogosphere screaming ‘human rights’ and ‘freedom’, completely oblivious of the responsibilities that come with freedoms.
