Hold your nose, Lagos is now one huge garbage city

The old Lagos of putrid stench and garbage heaps is upon all residents of the city once more.

Everywhere you turn in Lagos, heaps of refuse with their accompanying health hazard, are practically waving back at you.

“I wonder what route passes to work. Maybe the cleaner Lagos project is only working on those paths. Or is there no one who works with him that can tell him what is going on?”, asked On-Air Personality with BeatFM, Dami Elebe.

“Lagos is too filthy. Ambode, just return it back to how you met LAWMA please.

“I am now seeing heaps of dirt in places I didn't even know was the general location for throwing trash away in that community. The dirt is overflowing. It is all over the streets. What is this mess? Why would you put us through this by scrapping a project that was working?

“Even if you wanted to do this cleaner Lagos project, you should have done it alongside LAWMA and whatever they had going on to add to the times trash is picked up. I don't know what you think you're doing but you're doing it wrong. FIX UP”, Elebe adds.

Twitter user Folarin @FoluShaw puts it this way: “I have experienced a Lagos that is cleaner than it currently is. We are currently in regression...not progression. Lagos is dirty, filthy and smelly. It was not this bad in the last administration please. Let’s be factual.

“Once again....Just a reminder. Lagos is DIRTY. AMOBODE is failing on waste collection and environment. Failing horribly”.

Another Lagos resident, Adebayo Akintunde said; “It beats my imagination that Ambode and his team eased out PSP guys without looking at its impact knowing full well that VisionScape is not ready yet. The result is a DIRTY Lagos. The sight of dirt is shameful”.

Lawyer and writer, Tunde Leye, put it this way on Twitter: “Over the last two years, Lagos has become extremely dirty. These contractors hardly collect refuse again. The street cleaners we used to see are rarely seen now. The first thing to do surely is to study why and produce a report available to the public”.

Why is Lagos suddenly so dirty?

It all began when the Lagos State government sacked its previous waste collection and disposal company, PSP.

A new company called VisionScape, was hired to replace PSP (Private Sector Participation).

However, with VisionScape still trying to settle in amid teething problems, garbage heaps are chasing Lagosians off roads and streets.

Road medians have been ceded to bags of refuse and the nation’s commercial capital continues to stink to high heavens.

A staff of VisionScape told on the condition of anonymity that his company is still overwhelmed by the volume of waste in Lagos.

“First, the dumpsite used by PSP is the one in Ojota. We can’t use the same dumpsite for obvious reasons. So, we are using the one in Epe. We have two big trucks for waste disposal to Epe. But maybe that’s not enough”, the source said.

Sabotage?

The source also added that VisionScape is not ruling out sabotage.

“We have been doing this job well, then all of a sudden, the volume of waste in Lagos triples or quadruples? This is just politics. Where is the waste coming from? We haven’t been resting since we were handed this job. But the waste keeps growing. Some people who are unhappy that we got this job, are trying to sabotage us. It’s as simple as that", he said.

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Two other employees of VisionScape also told Pulse that they are being sabotaged and that they are fifth columnists working behind the scenes to make them fail.

Promise

At the Lagos House in Alausa last week, State Governor Ambode promised to fix the waste problem engulfing the Lagos metropolis.

Meanwhile, the refuse heaps in Lagos are transforming into hills by the day. As Pulse drove through the Lagos-Apapa Oshodi expressway shortly before this story was filed, garbage heaps had taken over the road medians from Ilamoye to Hasan bus stops.

“This is not the Lagos Fashola left us”, one resident remarked ruefully.