Lagos State government has pledged to intensify its advocacy to ensure residents embrace voluntary cleanliness of their environment, saying the monthly environmental sanitation exercise has come to stay in a bid to ensure a cleaner city.
The Lagos government noted this during the second edition of the reintroduced monthly environmental sanitation, which held across the state
As the wife of the Lagos State Governor, Dr. Ibijoke Sanwo-Olu, participated in the exercise at Alimosho Local Government Area, accompanied by the state’s Commissioner for the Environment and Water Resources, Tokunbo Wahab, Special Adviser to the Governor on the Environment, Rotimi Akodu, members of the Committee of Wives of Lagos State Officials (COWLSO), and other top government functionaries, the state’s Head of Service, Bode Agoro, led top government officials in the monitoring of the exercise in Apapa area of the state.
Speaking with journalists, Commissioner for the Environment and Water Resources, Wahab, lauded the exercise, noting that Alimosho is one of the cleanest local government areas in the state.
He said: ‘’We observed some local government areas are very clean and this local government seems to be one of them. Here, we cleaned up some areas. What we have to do is to encourage the chairman of the local government area and his team, the member of the House to do much more, more engagement with the people with cleaning their environment. You can see that they have cleaned the environment, they also have their own compactors to cart away the waste, so the chairman has done well.
‘’We also made it clear to Lagos residents in respect of the holidays and the festivities, the commitment to the environment is unique. We had our Sallah celebration three days ago; yesterday was a big festival for those that know but today, we must clean our environment because we have a commitment that every last Saturday of the month is for lagos environmental sanitation day.’’
Speaking on the recalcitrance of some commercial vehicles on the road and residents not coming out to participate in the environmental sanitation exercise, Wahab noted, ‘’In fairness to commercial buses, we didn’t find most of them on the road, just very few. We have already communicated to the right people.
‘’On the residents, we have to keep communicating with them on why they have to take in this culture and spend two hours in a whole month to clean up their environment. We are trying to create a culture and that is a dominant culture of a clean environment in Lagos State. After a while, we will do the assessment also.’’
Emphasizing on the restriction of movement, we made it clear that, ‘’We are not imposing restrictions. We are fine with what I have seen. We are taking the message of conviction. This is a thing that has been off for almost 10 years., so bringing it back with a different demography, youth population, then, we must find a way to communicate it.’’
While corroborating the Wahab, Agoro reiterated the importance of clean environment, saying: ‘’We are serious about cleaning our environment. Nobody likes to live in a dirty environment. You don’t feel good, you don’t feel happy. And you fall sick, look at all sorts of illnesses, air-borne diseases going right all over the place. So the more we clean our environment, the healthier we’ll be. So, it’s encouraging, it can be better for sure.’’
Urging the residence to embrace voluntary compliance, Agoro said: ‘’It’s not about punishment. It’s about encouraging them to desist from such behavior. Of course, there are sanctions. If you throw dirt on the road or stuff like that, there are sanctions. And there’s enforcement.
‘’The Ministry of Environment will do the appropriate enforcement. If you violate the sanitation law, there must be sanctions. But then, we want a situation where we don’t need to enforce those sanctions. We want to create an environment where people automatically know that it is wrong to throw dirt on the road.’’
