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Former Minister of Youth and Sports, Solomon Dalung, has condemned the vandalism of the newly constructed FESTAC-Alakija link bridge in Lagos, warning that society must stop excusing criminality with poverty and unemployment.
Dalung was reacting to the arrest of 27 suspected scavengers by the Lagos State Government after they were allegedly caught vandalising the bridge by breaking into its concrete pillars and removing iron rods, steel reinforcements and other materials for scrap.
Lagos State Commissioner for the Environment and Water Resources, Tokunbo Wahab confirmed the arrest of the suspects in an X post over the weekend.
Reacting in a Sunday Facebook post, Dalung described the act as “not ordinary scavenging.”
“You are literally breaking the pillars holding up a bridge that carries human beings and vehicles, simply to remove the steel inside and sell it. That is dangerous, criminal and completely indefensible,” he said.
Dalung linked the Lagos incident to a wider culture of vandalism he said has for years affected public infrastructure in parts of Northern Nigeria, citing the theft of school doors and windows, hospital equipment, borehole components, transformer cables and road metals.
“And now, we are seeing the same mentality manifesting itself in Lagos,” he said.
The former minister argued that while poverty can explain desperation, “it cannot justify deliberately destroying a bridge.”
“Unemployment can explain why someone is looking for a means of survival. It cannot justify removing the structural reinforcement of a bridge and potentially putting thousands of lives at risk,” Dalung stated.
He cautioned against turning concerns about ethnic profiling into “a shield against accountability.”
“If someone commits a crime, let the law deal with the individual. Do not defend the crime because the offender belongs to your community. Do not manufacture a victim out of a criminal simply because you fear what his prosecution might say about your people,” he said.
Dalung noted that millions of Nigerians are struggling economically, “yet they do not all resort to vandalising bridges, stealing hospital equipment or stripping public infrastructure for scrap.”
“If we continue to excuse every criminal act committed by people from our communities because they are poor, unemployed or marginalised, we are not helping them. We are destroying them. And we are destroying the society around them,” he added.
He warned that when Lagos prosecutes the suspects, “some people will inevitably begin shouting ‘stereotyping’, ‘discrimination’ or whatever label is convenient.”
“Condemning criminality is not condemning a people. If anything, the most responsible thing we can do for our own communities is to confront this problem honestly,” Dalung said.
“We cannot keep exporting a culture of vandalising public property and then become offended whenever the consequences catch up with us. We need to correct this. Not because Lagos says so. Not because the South says so. But because our own people deserve better than a culture that destroys the very infrastructure meant to serve them.”
“If we don’t correct the direction now, we may eventually find ourselves becoming the very problem that the rest of the country has to protect itself from. And that would be a tragedy of our own making,” he said.
