Lagos State cannot continue to explain away its worsening waste management crisis with excuses and admissions of poor planning, the African Democratic Congress (ADC) House of Assembly candidate for Eti-Osa Constituency II, Ayodele Adio, has said.
Adio was reacting to comments by the Lagos State Deputy Governor, who reportedly said the government had asked waste management operators to undertake a job whose scale they “did not predict” and that the government initially thought the state was generating about 13,000 tonnes of waste daily.
“After more than two decades of successive administrations, how can a government responsible for managing one of the largest and most densely populated cities in Africa say it did not predict the scale of the waste it would have to manage?”
According to him, the Deputy Governor’s comments expose a deeper problem of poor planning and a lack of imagination within the state government.
“Waste generation is not an unpredictable phenomenon. Population growth, urbanisation, commercial activity and consumption patterns are measurable. A serious government should be planning ahead of these realities, not discovering them after the streets and neighbourhoods are overwhelmed by refuse.”
