Lagos Flood Under Control

Lagos State Commissioner for the Environment, Dr. Muiz Banire, in this interview with P.M. News editors assures Lagosians that the flood currently ravaging some parts of the state is under control

Q: Can you tell us about the efforts being made by the government to prevent flood in in Lagos?

A: The current flooding is not because we had not attended to the issue before now. If you go to Gbagada, Bariga and Ikorodu road, we have been able to control the flood in these areas successfully. The ones you can see now include Ijora Causeway and Apapa expressway. These are as a result of the bad state of the roads.

We have brought these to the attention of the Federal Ministry of Works. They said they have awarded the contract. When we noticed that nothing was being done there, we asked our own people to go there.

Whatever work that is being done now is going to be palliative. Permanent solution will be later. It is the same problem they have in Dolphin Estate in Ikoyi. There are other areas with such work going on. Take the example of Ifako-Ijaiye, we have done a lot of work there. The matter is that the water is supposed to pass through the other side to Onilekere in Ikeja. But the culvert under which the water will pass is not big enough. So, we need to expand it.

We have that major challenge. As I am talking to you, we have contacted our contractors; they have filled one side, remaining the other side. In Ejigbo, if you go there now, the water level has gone down. Our contractors have been there too.

At the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) area, the contractor has been there for 18 months. If you go there right now, you will see that the water level has subsidised substantially compared with what it used to be.

Q: But, sir, Lagosians had a harrowing experience at Ikeja last Friday when flood virtually took over the Obafemi Awolowo Road for a better part of the day. What are you doing to correct this?

A: In Ikeja area, we have solved the problem of flooding on Kodesoh Street. The water there is supposed to be discharged through Anifowoshe. Go there, you will meet people working there. It will now link Mangoro. There is a channel not too far from there under construction. That is the next level of the work. And until we link all of them together, there is no way there won’t be a pool of water immediately it rains. We have already solved Kodesoh flood problem for the water to pass through Anifowoshe. The drainage work there is 80 percent completed.

In Mobil junction on Ogba Ijaiye road, they have a similar problem with what exists at Alfa Nla in Agege. We have completed our own work but there is an existing project being handled by another body, we call it LMDGP. It is a World Bank-assisted programme. Their own is just to finish the work in the entire area. They have just started their own work, that is why flood is still noticeable there whenever it rains.

Opposite Mobil Filling Station, near Ogba, we have finished our portion there. The one that remains is that of Oba Ogunji Road. The World Bank project is to complete the work, ours is to supervise them.

Q: Considering the magnitude of the work you are doing, do you have the resources to complete them?

A: The resources at our disposal is very limited. I give you an example. There is a bad road in Satellite Town, the stretch is about five kilometres. They have been seeking my attention for some time to do the road but looking at the resources available, maybe we can attend to one kilometre of the road. The water will now be transferred to other areas. So, we just pray that whichever one we can start, we can complete it.

If you go to Oko Oba, the work is completed. Go to UNILAG second gate, you will see a channel already finished all the way to Bariga. There is another one to Surulere from Apapa.

All these things cannot be done in a haste. It is not a question of nine months. We must do a line, and when you line a channel, it must not rain. Unfortunately, when you line a channel, it takes average of two, three months to do the work. These are the challenges.

Look, there are some areas where we know there are big problems. Some, we have started (work), some, there is no solution. I will give an example – Adeniji Adele and some parts of Bariga. In these places, the water is below sea level. In a part of Bariga, I told them if I dredge this place, your buildings will fall on themselves.

People in Iponri area told me they wanted development there. I told them they must achieve 5.5 metres above sea level in sand filling before they can erect any structure there. You know our own local people, they won’t do any proper sandfilling before laying foundation.

During dry season, they enjoy their homes but once it rains, there is trouble for all of them. And they start calling on the government. There is no magic we can do. We have other areas like that, especially Agiliti, near Mile 12. In Ajegunle, on the way to Ikorodu on the left, ask them of the approval for their buildings, they have none. If you want to build in such an area, you have to sandfill properly; it must be two to three metres above the sea level before you can do anything meaningful. But they don’t do that and when flood comes, people will cry and say ‘look at what flood is doing to these people. What is the government doing?’

We have a lot of places like that such as Ijora Badia. They are living in a swamp. The best we can do is to level the whole place and start rebuilding again.We have some areas like that as a result of neglect in the past. Now, things are changing. If you want to construct anything now, you have to contact the physical planning people who will check it and if they see a canal refer you to the environment ministry. And if you want to do any major construction, they say go and clear your drainage.

Q: Even the Ministry of Works in Lagos State cannot do any road without clearing the drainage. The questions they ask is: Where are we going to turn the water? Where do we direct it to?

A: Like the Mobil Junction near Ogba that I spoke about earlier, it is not that there is no drainage there. It is overcharged. The volume of water passing there is more than the space. We need to reroute some of them. We are struggling to realign. We ask anyone, even the local governments willing to do any work to let us know. We give them a particular level they must attain. If you want to discharge water to the other side and you are building your own house this side, you must ensure that the other side is not higher. Developers were not doing that before. They will say ‘the water is not going.’ How can it go when the drainage channel you are discharging water into is at a higher level.

Q: Sir, one also observed that silt cleared from drainages are not cleared on time. They are left on the side of the road for weeks and sometimes months. Isn’t there a way by which the silt could be cleared immediately or at most three days after clearing?

A: As for drainage clearing, it is not only our ministry that does it. Residents do it, local governments, LAMATA, Ministry of Works, LAWMA, and other agencies are involved. Even before your publication, we had issued a directive to these agencies to ensure immediate clearing. We told them not to try it at all if they cannot clear the silt from the roadsides immediately.

Somebody sent a text to me about an abandoned silt and I told the ministry’s officials to remove it and surcharge the local government involved. We are the supervising body but we have all these other agencies involved in clearing. Local governments are responsible for clearing the filth you see on the roads. Our own duty is much more than clearing small drainages.

Q: What measures are being taken to tackle flood in schools and residential areas?

A: Talking about residential areas, which also include schools, we know that many schools have been affected that we had to close down some of them. Look at Gbagada General Hospital, you cannot go there when it rains. We are sandfilling the place. Now, we are doing the drains all over. The whole road is paralysed. All over the state, we are doing major work.

Whether it is school, residential or hospital, when there is flooding, the area has to be deflooded. When people embark on construction without informing us, they usually contend with flood. But once we know, we try to stop them. When we are not there, they continue again without following the necessary procedures that could prevent flooding. Once there is need to work in an area, we relocate the residents like we did to the people in Adeniji Adele. We moved them to Ikorodu.

The traders in Oshodi, we gave them three different alternatives. What we do normally is relocation. Then the people start saying: won ti tun n le wa (they are sending us away), but we always provide another place for them.

Q: Some say the alternative provided are too costly and unaffordable…

A: Where they think our alternative is not affordable, we have a solution. The microfinance banks can help without collateral. They have been set up for this purpose.

To the extent that we take into consideration the other person, things will work. People need education and information.

If you say don’t urinate here, there must be alternative. It is when you have alternative that you can say ‘what are you doing there? I will arrest you.’ When you say ‘don’t cut trees,’ the man says ‘are you giving me money for kerosene or gas?’ You need to sit him down to educate him that ‘the wood you are cutting is killing you in the long run; that it’s much more expensive.’ Or the man using generator, you need to sit him down. When you finish with him, the man will say, ‘I didn’t know.’ These are some of the preliminaries.

Q: How were you able to dislodge the traders at Oshodi?

A: When we want to clear Oshodi, we met the people. First, the union men who are usually their husbands. I told them ‘we don’t want traders on that rail line’. The first one we did was Mosafejo, when you stay on top of the bridge, you see the traders on your right.

We told them we don’t want anybody trading there. Before then, we did a study and we saw that on other side there was space, but the people will always prefer to stay by the road side.

After the sensitisation, we took them by surprise just like what I did when I was at the Ministry of Transportation when we towed some tankers away from Ijora expressway. The tanker drivers refused to go to where we provided for them. We moved into Oshodi by 2 a.m. When they (traders) came in the morning, they met us as the occupiers. There was no space for them to continue trading there.

Q: Despite spirited effort by the state government to contain the ocean surge at the Bar beach, the beach overflowed its bank recently…

A: What is happening at the Bar Beach makes people think the project has failed. That is not true. What is happening there is natural and inevitable because of the sandfilling that is going on for the Atlantic City project. But we have been able to control the erosion. We don’t need to do that again.

Just as I said earlier, the people need to be informed, they need education to do the right thing and prevent flooding which we have substantially brought under control. We shall continue to enlighten them.