Nigeria generally is faced with significant air pollution challenges, among others that question the country’s air quality status. Almost every breath taken is more of a step closer to death. Hazardous emissions have sent many to early graves as well hospitals for treatments while others are living with it due to years of exposure to polluted environment.

The General Manager of the Lagos State Environmental Protection Agency, LASEPA, Dr. Babatunde Ajayi, in this brief interview with Assistant-News Editor, Vanguard Media, Olasunkanmi Akoni, expresses concern over non-compliance by residents to environmental safety rules and regulations. He laments the bad environmental behavioral tendency often display by residents, including religious houses which he stresses threaten sustainable, healthy environment at large. Ajayi also speaks on other sundry issues Excerpts:

Partnership/capacity devt drive

LASEPA: We are prioritizing things that are peculiar to our environment; we have partnership with all the universities in Lagos, both Federal and state.

A few months ago we hosted university of Lagos, with international institutions. We had over 90 participants from other countries. Things like these happen because of partnerships. Because we are deliberate about it. Cooperating and collaborating with institutions around.

In the next one year we are going to prioritise developing local skills among our technical institutions. Instead of buying air quality monitors from Germany, or China, we are going to develop them locally.

Partnering with Lagos State University, LASU, University of Lagos, UNILAG. We have started the conversations where we begin to put those things in place. Also within our agencies we are doing a lot of work together in environment and other ministries like, health, transport, agriculture, education, among others. It’s just a lot of work putting everything together to have a good direction.

In the next one year we are prioritizing training of our staff, in capacity development building so that anybody in LASEPA is very grounded and detailed with strong technical capacity in line with global best practices. We are at the fore front of environmental protection in Nigeria. We will continue to set the standards to lead the path and get better as we move.

We are doing a lot in all sectors. Our spread is wide. The non- smoking law is one of our responsibilities. It’s under the Emission Control Department. It’s one of the emission problems. And both Federal and State Ministry of Health are interested in the enforcement drive. The enforcement primarily lies on LASEPA.

Air quality in Lagos is above average

LASEPA: Records show that air quality in Lagos is above average. You will say above average because there are pockets of poor air quality. The places where we have bad air quality, there are pockets here and there. There are several communities that do not have poor air quality. It is only pockets of places where we have high density in terms of vehicular activities.

The one in Olusosun, close to LAMATA Yard, in Ojota, It’s not only known for just the dumpsite, it also record high vehicular activities. That place is a complete hub. People going to Island, from Ikorodu to Maryland, It’s a major hub with intersections, leading to different roads, that place will have bad air quality problems.

In Ojo, around LASU-Iba, axis usually, it has bad air quality problems. The problems there are vehicular, road construction pollution due to the road construction going on there. There is active dust from cement, moving construction workers and materials around. Generally Lagos has good air quality. Ultimately, Lagos is doing well. The good thing also is that we are able to mitigate wherever we find problems.

Incessant gas explosion/CNG

LASEPA: For the cooking gas, talking about explosion, I think it’s all about safety precautions. However, for cooking gas, while we are trying to move away from kerosene and fire wood, charcoals to LPG, cooking gas, what now happens is that for accessibility people starts opening small shops. Those small shops sometimes, some politicians use it as a form of empowerment by giving people certain amount of money for opening gas shop.

There are regulations. We have regulations that states the minimum size of a shop, temperature measurement, must have thermometer. You can fill gas cylinder in a metal container in the hot sun, this is a recipe for disaster.

We have the laws in place, with effective monitoring. The proliferation is so much and it is a serious concern to government. In Ikeja we have about 2,500 retailers. Almost every street has a gas outlet. Monitoring is one of the problems but people need to stick to regulations. We have conversations with associations regularly. We are also at the point of consistent training. The enforcement there will not be tight but consistent training so that people will not see it as the only aim is to shut businesses down but obviously to continuously get you better at managing it safely. Safe management is very important in this case because we are trying to transit into clean energy.

CNG

LASEPA: The Compressed Natural Gas, CNG,, the Federal Government FG is the sole body handling the product, same with LPG. However, the environment and impact of those activities on the environment is where we come in.

For CNG, FG has set up designated places. The Edo explosion then, the Presidential CNG initiative clearly came out to say the conversion was not done by accredited or trained person. Cylinder has expired. Cylinders do have expiry date. But most people so far its cylinder they just filled gas inside.

So if it’s not an accredited person you run the risk of cooking danger and that’s exactly what happened. Gas explosion is totally different problem. The fatalities are almost irreparable.

But the damage it causes is colossal. The recent gas explosion in Lagos was probably the one at the Mobil Filling Station in Ikeja. So, we are keen on regulations and enforcement. Be we call meetings in partnership with safety commission, we train them, very consistent trainings.

The last data, we have well over 20, 000 outlets of gas dealers in Lagos. If you have spread all over like that and look at rapid development you have all over Lagos State between Lekki and Epe, all those communities we see the upsurge gas stations and outlets.

So, we need to manage them carefully and make sure we are on top of the situation very well.

In 2024 January till October, we recoded 27 major cases, excluding smaller cases in the kitchen, the unreported. But 37 fatalities recorded due to the extent of the damage. That’s why we are tightening up monitoring and regulations measures.

Medical Waste Disposal

LASEPA: Medical waste falls in the category of waste called hazardous. We have a department Chemical and Hazardous Waste Management. This is very important in any community. LASEPA assess standard of how medical waste should be handled. We set standard, make policies. LAWMA collects medical waste. There is an arrangement with Lagos Waste Management Authority, LAWMA from the hospital and they incinerate at designated centres. So, LAWMA handles the medical waste. They are in charge of collecting solid waste. But we set the standards and monitoring both public and private sectors. We are able to deliver on the standards.

Noise Pollution challenges

LASEPA: Generally, residents are bad behaved in terms of complying with regulations. One major challenge of noise pollution is that after enforcement they comply for a while, and they go ballistic again. They go back to same offence. Then we start the process again. The reason we have them to comply for a while is because they pay fines and we shut them down.

There is no city in the world that does not leverage fines and penalties for violations. There must be consequences. It’s not only Nigeria’s problem alone, is global. People just have the tendency to go back to bad behavior.

The use of microphones also at bus stops and religious houses are major concerns. Even Christian worshippers come out with loudspeakers and microphones to call worshippers. One major challenge is non-compliance, most operates in the night, and sending staff at night to enforce the law is a herculean task.

For noise pollution religious sector takes the highest because there is little or no control in terms of how you can set up religious houses going by our current regulations. It will take a very strong-willed policy to have that controlled.

In Nigeria today some churches want to have two branches on a street or more. Mosques also contribute in terms of Public Address Systems which are noise pollution. In noise pollution, religious houses take the highest number of contributors.

Control mechanism for compliance

LASEPA: For the religious houses, we call them every quarter to Adeyemi Bero Hall, Alausa for regular engagement. We have another soon. We have conversations with the representatives of the religious houses why noise pollution is bad idea and why they need to maintain less than 60 decibels for decorum during service as well as the danger they are causing to the public health and themselves.

We do this engagement regularly. We also embark on media advocacy like this interview across media platforms like electronics and prints. When a particular facility or someone violates, we send abatement notices before sealing up if they fail to abate. Even when others see you sealing up a building, they will still not stop the noise because in their minds it is a religion matter. It’s very sensitive to many people but we also need to know that for us to build a society that works everybody needs to behave and maintain decorum.

Where your own right to practice religion ends that’s where the rights to have good sleep on a Sunday morning begin for others. It is usually a big problem controlling this among our people.

Dog barking

LASEPA: Interesting the law says you can not keep more than two dogs in a premises. That’s what the law says. So, if your dogs bark and disturb the neighbours all we do is to send warnings and if you fail to heed will bring in the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Systems because they deal with animals and takes the dogs away.