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First Lady of Lagos State Dr Ibijoke Sanwo-Olu has appealed to residents to be patient with the state government as it intensifies efforts to address the lingering waste management challenges across the state.
Sanwo-Olu made the appeal on Saturday while monitoring the sixth edition of the reintroduced monthly environmental sanitation exercise in Mafoluku, Oshodi-Isolo Local Government Area, where she expressed concern over the volume and mixture of waste generated in some residential streets.
Accompanied by the wife of the Deputy Governor, Mrs Oluremi Hamzat, Special Adviser to the Governor on Environment, Mr Olakunle Rotimi-Akodu, officials of the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources and the Lagos State Waste Management Authority (LAWMA), among others, she visited Ajibulu, Oluyeye, Olowora, Eweje, Ayinde and Ola-Ore streets.
Sanwo-Olu said the government was committed to restoring cleaner and healthier communities, but urged Lagosians to support the effort by changing their attitude towards waste disposal.
“My plea to Lagosians is to be patient. It is a work in progress. We are all working towards ensuring that we keep Lagos clean, and I hope that with this reminder and the monthly environmental sanitation exercise, they will remember the importance of keeping our environment clean,” she said.
She also called for greater adoption of waste sorting at the household and community levels, stressing that separating recyclable, dry and wet waste would make collection, evacuation and management easier.
“We noticed that we need to advocate more on this because some of the waste we saw today included bottles, dry waste and wet waste. We need to separate them so that when they are picked up, it will be easier to sort and manage them,” she said.
According to her, proper waste sorting is one of the areas the government is focusing on as part of its continuing efforts to improve environmental sanitation across Lagos.
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Sanwo-Olu also stressed the importance of maintaining cleaner and more sustainable communities at the grassroots, noting that proper sanitation was crucial to preventing the spread of communicable diseases.
While acknowledging concerns over waste evacuation, she said LAWMA needed to be more responsive, adding that the situation could only improve with sustained efforts by all stakeholders.
She commended residents, particularly women and children in Oshodi-Isolo, for participating in the sanitation exercise and urged them to sustain the practice beyond the monthly exercise.
However, residents of Olowora and Eweje streets raised concerns over what they described as prolonged neglect of waste evacuation in their communities.
Some residents alleged that heaps of refuse had remained on their streets for about six months because of failure by LAWMA to evacuate them.
They said they had continued to pay their Private Sector Participation (PSP) waste collection bills regularly, but appealed to the state government to ensure prompt evacuation of refuse to avert possible health hazards and an outbreak of disease.
The residents’ concerns came as the statewide sanitation exercise, which has been reintroduced by the Lagos State Government, continued across communities on Saturday.
The exercise is aimed at encouraging residents to take greater responsibility for environmental cleanliness while complementing government efforts to improve sanitation and waste management across the state.
