Lagos to sanction companies polluting environment

The Special Adviser to Lagos State Governor on Environment, Dr. Taofeeq Folami, made the disclosure while monitoring environmental sanitation exercise in Agege Local Council.
 He condemned acts of residents of Alfa Nla area of Agege during the monitoring exercise, noting that drainages and canals in the area were blocked with empty water table plastic and empty cans of assorted soft drinks as a result of indiscriminate dumping of refuse by the residents.
He said deliberate dumping of refuse into the drainage was common among residents, particularly market woman and men in the state, explaining that such act was frustrating the state government’s efforts of clearing the drains.
He said, “When people complained about the need for good roads, the state government listened and embarked on construction of standard roads every year. As I speak with you, there are lots of road construction works going on across the state. One of the things we have to do before upgrading a road network is to improve the state of drainage network. But indiscriminate dumping of refuse has been one major challenge confronting us. As we are in the rainy season, drainages under construction are filled with refuse thereby frustrating contractors. And we need to complete the drainages first before fixing the roads.”
On the Alfa-Nla road construction that the residents of Agege complained of being delayed, Folami explained that the drainage system will have to be redesigned, saying that was the reason why the state government was yet to embark on the road construction work.
“We have to do some awareness campaign because we noticed that a lot of refuse are dumped into the canals in the state canals. We will be focusing on Agege to ensure that they inculcate the habit of not patronising cart pushers.
“We also discovered that the enforcement was low. We will investigate that and we will ensure that it does not happen again,” he added.
Also speaking, the Permanent Secretary, Office of Drainage Services, Engineer Muyideen Akinsanya, lamented that many Lagosians did not know how the canal works.
He said: “The Awori canal starts from Alfa Junction which had been isolated with this contract. We are in the mid-rainy season. And for us to achieve the remaining 30 percent, we have instructed the contractor to concentrate on the construction of the culverts.
“Some of them are inadequate. By us providing the culverts, which do not require much time and risk to construct in the rainy season, will allow the culverts to be functional. We have instructed the relevant agency to clean the drain continuously until the new drainage is reconstructed.”
 He said the work on drainage will be completed before the end of the year.