Lagos State Deputy Governor, Obafemi Hamzat, has expressed concern over the worsening waste situation in the state, saying the state now generates an estimated 17,000 tonnes of waste daily.
He attributed the ugly development to a combination of increased waste generation, shortage of functional waste collection trucks and challenges facing private sector operators.
The Deputy Governor said the Lagos Waste Management Authority (LAWMA), which is responsible for waste management in the state, had been tasked with handling a volume of refuse that was significantly higher than originally anticipated.
Speaking on Nigerian Info 99.3fm, the Hamzat said the government initially estimated that Lagos generated about 13,000 tonnes of waste daily but later discovered that the actual figure was closer to 17,000 tonnes.
He said, “Well, it’s easy for me to just throw the agency under the bus, but I won’t do that. That’s the agency that’s responsible, that we all know, LAWMA. But it’s so we’ve asked them to do a job, the scale of which we did not predict.”
“And that scale is really unprecedented in this part of the world. So we thought that we are generating 13 tonnes on a daily basis. It turns out we are generating about 17,000.”
According to the Deputy Governor, the discrepancy in waste generation figures has made it difficult for the state government to accurately plan and manage waste collection across Lagos.
“If you go around every part of Africa, if you go to Accra, Lagos, Lome, Freetown, what you see is disorganisation,” he said.
“As a people, the first thing we need to do is we need to organise ourselves. So how do you plan for something you can’t measure? How? So people sleep on the street, this and that. So if you don’t, what you can’t measure, it’s difficult to plan and manage it.”
Hamzat noted that waste is also generated by people living and carrying out activities on the streets, making it more difficult for authorities to accurately determine the volume of refuse produced.
The Deputy Governor also identified rising operational costs and a shortage of functional waste collection trucks among the factors affecting refuse collection.
He said Lagos has about 420 Private Sector Participants (PSPs) involved in waste collection, with each operator expected under its agreement with the government to have at least two trucks.
However, he said many of the operators no longer have the required number of trucks because some vehicles have become unusable or businesses have shut down.
“The reality is that a lot of them don’t have two anymore. Either it has shut down. They wanted to, they came to us to say, well, cost of diesel has gone up. We want to increase the tariff,” he said.
Hamzat said the state government rejected the proposed tariff increase but agreed to provide additional support to the operators.
“And finally we said, no, don’t increase the tariff. Let the state pay,” he said.
“But we negotiated. So let’s say they wanted to go by X. We said, no, X minus Y. Y is a positive integer to say instead of 10 Naira, let it be, you know, four, five, and then we pay it to them. So that was the first challenge.”
Hamzat said the state government subsequently discovered that a significant number of the existing waste collection trucks were no longer fit for use, prompting it to order new vehicles.
“The second challenge is that we realise that a lot of the trucks are no longer usable. So we order trucks,” he said.
According to him, Lagos has 57 local government and local council development areas, with two trucks planned for each, amounting to 114 vehicles. The state government also ordered another 100 trucks.
“We were supposed to get delivery in July. Unfortunately, they now said it’s going to be September,” Hamzat said.
The delay, he explained, was one of the reasons he was reluctant to blame LAWMA entirely for the current waste situation.
“So when I said I will not throw LAWMA under the bus, it’s because of something like that. It’s not technically their fault. Maybe we should have ordered earlier. Maybe. I mean, we must take responsibility,” the Deputy Governor said.
