By Princewill Ekwujuru

As Lagos State Signage and Advertisement Agency (LASAA) cleans up Lagos as a result of indiscriminate political posters display, the Agency says it will not give waiver in future elections.

Mr. Tunji Bello, Managing Director of LASAA made this known during the launching of the Poster clean up exercise; tagged: Now that elections are over, It’s time to take our city back in Lagos, where he said the clean up was a demonstration of the Agency’s commitment to the application of the rules governing the regulation of political posters.

He noted that political parties misused the opportunity given to them without prejudice which eventually caused a visual blight.

Quoting schedule 3 subsection (1) of the LASAA law, the Managing Director said the law empowers the agency to control the pasting and display of posters on public structures and highways.

“To this end, we re-affirm that we will not hesitate to apply the full weight of the law on anybody who violates the law. As we perform this launching today, our mission is simple, to take our city back. I urge you all and members of the public to join hands with LASAA on this massive clean-up exercise.

We implore all organisations who indulge in the pasting of posters defacing the city to exploit other avenues of advertisement and communication which are more effective and efficient, he warned.

Bello who complained that before the commencement of the elections, the Agency had spelt out messages and measures put in place to curb the indiscriminate pasting of political posters, banners and other materials for election campaigns. “We established clear guidelines and communicated this to all parties concerned to ensure a cleaner city, even during the elections. All these we did without prejudice to any political party or association.”

Further he said, “It was our intention to ensure fairness and to apply the rules without sentiments. Our common interest was to establish sanity and protect the environment from further defilement as a result of visual blight,”he said.

“Apart from the purchase of additional equipment for this clean-up, we are also embarking on the painting of designated locations in every ward for the pasting of posters,” he assured.