Lagosians live on grandfathers' wastes

http://odili.net/news/source/2007/feb/4/300.html

This is an extract from a Vangaurd Online article.

Febraury 4,2007.

SOMEWHERE in Lagos, a girl has just had a baby and she does not want the child. Secretly, she does something against the baby and snuffs life out of her. She moves without being noticed and dumps the dead child into the waste bin. In yet another development, an adult dies. Because of the economic crunch, the family lacks money to procure land to bury their dead. Under the cover of darkness, they carry the body to a canal, or wetland and dump the body amongst discarded household and industrial wastes. In a dramatic fashion, waste management operators move to clear rubbish from a wetland or piece of land. Some residents of the area appear.


Residents (angrily): Who sent you to come and carry those wastes? Ta lo ran yin nise?

Waste managers: It's our job to clear refuse.

Residents: Did we invite you? Leave our waste o! That’s how they run errands not meant for them.

Within few minutes, both parties begin to wrestle over the ownership of the waste. For the residents, the wastes are meant to fill up some open land or reclaim swampy areas. Lagos is a city of contradictions; and ironically, some local government officials are even responsible for the construction of market stalls and other structures on dump sites. The Orile Iganmu market was constructed on a reclaimed dumpsite in 1991.

In the past three decades, Lagos has been labelled as one of the dirtiest cities in the world. The large population, the small land mass, bureaucratic bottlenecks and inappropriate environmental technologies, have been identified as some of the key factors that make Lagos the city of garbage.

Lagos appears helpless on how to manage her wastes over the years.......

\Author, not identified