FOR the downtrodden and hopeless, help can sometimes arrive from the most unexpected quarters. Such a heartening intervention occurred recently when government agents rescued four nursing mothers and their babies from an illegal dumpsite in Agboju, on the Lagos-Badagry Expressway in Lagos State.
Yet, the heartwarming rescue also exposes the disturbing depth of poverty and social vulnerability in Nigeria.
The World Bank says more than 140 million Nigerians live in extreme poverty, aggravated by the removal of petrol subsidies in May 2023.
This is a wake-up call that environmental sanitation cannot be divorced from the human suffering taking place in the very spaces authorities routinely seek to clear.
The Lagos Environmental Sanitation Corps, popularly known as KAI, said the women were rescued on Monday during an ongoing inter-agency cleanup of the Lagos-Badagry Expressway corridor.
