Lagos Is Running Out of Time on Waste
Every morning in Lagos, waste collection trucks begin their rounds before dawn. By mid-morning, most have returned to the depot half full. The rest of the city’s rubbish stays where it fell.
Lagos generates an estimated 10,000 tonnes of solid waste per day, making it one of the highest waste-producing cities on the continent. The Lagos State Waste Management Authority, known as LAWMA, officially serves the city’s 20-plus million residents. In practice, collection rates remain significantly below demand, particularly in the dense low-income neighbourhoods that house the majority of the population.
The Gap Between Policy and Practice
Nigeria has a National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency. Lagos State has its own environmental protection laws. Fines exist for illegal dumping. None of it has been sufficient to close the gap between waste generated and waste properly managed.
Part of the problem is structural. A significant portion of Lagos residents live in informal settlements where roads are too narrow for standard collection vehicles. Another part is economic: informal waste pickers, known locally as Baban Bola, recover recyclable materials from dumpsites and sell them to aggregators. They provide an essential service with no formal recognition, no safety equipment, and no income security.
What Works, and What Does Not
Several pilot programmes have demonstrated that community-based collection systems, where residents pay a modest monthly fee to a local operator with a smaller vehicle, can work in areas LAWMA cannot reach. The challenge is scaling them without squeezing out the operators who make them function.
Composting projects have shown promise in markets and food-processing areas, where organic waste is concentrated and predictable. But composting requires land, and land in Lagos is expensive and contested.
The landfill at Olusosun in Ojota, one of the city’s primary disposal sites, is already beyond its intended capacity. A second major site at Abule Egba faces similar pressures. Both are located in residential areas, with the health and environmental consequences that implies.
A City That Cannot Wait
Lagos is projected to become one of the world’s most populous cities within a generation. The infrastructure decisions made now, or not made, will shape the quality of life for tens of millions of people who are not yet born. Waste management is rarely the most glamorous item on a city’s agenda. In Lagos, it may be the most consequential.
The solutions are not unknown. Community collection, source separation, composting, formal integration of informal workers, investment in transfer stations, and political will to enforce existing law. What is missing is not the knowledge. It is the urgency.