Reinventing Waste Management in Lagos
In this report, Joseph Ushigiale examines the attempt by the Akinwunmi Ambode administration to revolutionise and create a win-win situation in waste management
There is an ongoing race among cities globally today and the main objective or target of the race is for the cities: to transform from their present small time status to megacities. Historically, there are several success stories and well documented remarkable accounts across continents of slums that weathered the storms to transform to megacities.
Thus cities that readily come to mind and are tangible testimonies of this transformation are New York in the United States of America, Tokyo in Japan, Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, London in the United Kingdom and Lagos in Nigeria. Lagos is indeed a classic case because even former governor and current leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Bola Tinubu acknowledged that “we met Lagos as a slum in 1999 when we took.”
History of Megacities… In the words of The World Population History “The urban shift over time has led to the emergence of the megacity – a city with a population of 10 million or more. New York City and Tokyo were the first known megacities, both reaching an urban conglomeration of over 10 million by the 1950s. But today they are far from alone in their size. In 2014 there were 28 megacities across the planet – from Sao Paulo, Brazil to Lagos, Nigeria and London, England to Shanghai, China – and all major global regions except Oceania are marked with megacities.”
So what then qualifies a city to be named a megacity? According to Wikipedia’s definition, a megacity is usually defined as a metropolitan area with a total population in excess of 10 million people. A megacity can be a single metropolitan area or two or more metropolitan areas that converge. The terms conurbation, metropolis and metroplex are also applied to the latter.
Industrial revolution which swept across Europe and Americas forced urban migration and population upsurge in unlikely places which hitherto were slums but through providence became sources of raw material of production bases. According to the World Population History urban population was three per cent in 1800 when compared to the 2008 figures which grossed over 50 per cent.
Throughout history, cities have attracted people as centers of culture, religion, learning, and economics. Looking back, the first wave of urban migration took place in what are today’s more developed countries, especially in Europe and North America. But looking ahead, 90 per cent of the future urban increase is expected to take place in Asia and Africa, and it is projected that close to two-thirds of all people will be calling cities home by 2050.
Ambode’s 3rd Largest City Ambition It is this race against time that Governor Akinwunmi Ambode is currently engaged in the most ambitious city transformation in the entire country. In almost two years since he assumed office, Ambode has sectorally allocated resources to bring about the change that will in no time crown Lagos as a truly mega city.
At the 14th annual lecture of Centre for Values in Leadership (CVL) held at MUSON Centre, Onikan, Lagos with a theme: ‘Living Well Together, Tomorrow: The Challenge of Africa’s Future Cities’. He announced that the prime goal of his administration is to grow the state from fifth to third largest economy in Africa by 2020. Specifically, the governor noted that the main objective of his administration remained the growth of Lagos from fifth to third largest economy in Africa, which he said formed the heart of his government. Ambode explained the significance of infrastructure projects his administration had been executing in strategic sectors of Lagos economy, noting that it was directed at up scaling the status of the state. He explained that the establishment of massive lay-bys, rehabilitation of innercity roads and the construction of flyovers in different parts of the state were designed to end the challenges of urbanisation.
To realise this prime goal, Ambode insisted that yellow buses would be removed from Lagos roads for a more efficient, well-structured and world class mass transportation system that would facilitate ease of movement within the city. He said the present connectivity mode in the state was not acceptable and befitting for a mega city, and as such, a well-structured transportation mode would soon be put in place to address the challenge.
Ambode said: “When I wake up in the morning and see all these yellow buses, commercial motorcycles and all kinds of tricycles, and we claim we are a mega city, that is not true. We must first acknowledge that that is a faulty connectivity that we are running.
New Waste Management Policy Another area the governor said the state government was also looking at was its desire to embark on massive reform in waste management system, expressing optimism that the plan “will be actualised by July this year.” From a global perspective, cities across the world produce 1.3 billion tons of waste annually all of which place huge demand on resources and logistics and the dire consequences of an epidemic of these waste are left unattended to and poison both water and environment.
Nigeria, on the other hand generates more than 32 million tons of solid waste annually and according to the Managing Director of Lagos Waste Management Agency (LAWMA), Engr. Abdul Wahab Ogunbiyi, the rate of waste generated by residents has hit 13,000 metric tonnes on a daily basis and therefore becomes imperative for the formulation of a holistic approach to tackle the accompanied challenges. Ambode said “We are also embarking on massive reform in the waste and sanitation management system. I don’t like the way the city is and the Private Sector Participants (PSP) collectors are not having enough capacity to do it but again should I tax people to death, the answer is no.
“I do not want to tax people, and so we need this partnership with the private sector so that it can invest in the sanitation management of the city and in no time, maybe by July, the city will change forever.”
The State Government last year, proactively signed a $135 million (N85 billion) agreement with a foreign firm as part of its new waste management policy, a partnership under a Public Private Partnership (PPP) initiative expected to last for four years.
To walk the talk, Ambode has directed the Lagos State Waste Management Authority (LAWMA), to stop the collection of waste bills, while instructing that all payments should be remitted to the coffers of Private Sector Participation (PSP) operators, just as the government also canceled the monthly environmental sanitation exercise.
The State’s Commissioner for the Environment, Dr. Babatunde Adejare, in a recent interview with a national daily said the investment, which will kick off soon involved the deployment of over 600 Mercedes Benz compactors and the engagement of street sweepers in all wards in the state, while private sector operators would be restricted to handle commercial waste.
Adejare also stated that the new policy would involve closure of existing landfill sites, creation of transfer loading stations in local councils and deployment of over one million ultra-modern waste bins with censors to monitor their movement against theft.
He said this was aimed at introducing new technology into waste management in the state.
He stressed that the decision to contract waste management under a Public Private Participation (PPP) arrangement was because of the high cost which he said the state could not afford because of limited resources.
Under the reform, Adejare said three colour coded waste bags would be distributed to homes for different kinds of waste.
Having set the legal groundwork, we adopted a holistic approach to addressing the unique problems of this mega city of 22 million people and designing a sustainable waste management system. In collaboration with the Ministries of the Environment, Justice, Urban and Physical planning we have developed strategies for regulation, enforcement and most importantly financing to support the initiatives. Over the past 10 months, these efforts have been shaped into The Cleaner Lagos Initiative