Lagos State Government is stepping up its battle against mounting refuse across the metropolis with the deployment of 220 newly acquired compactor trucks, as the state struggles to keep pace with the growing volume of waste generated by its rapidly expanding population.
Deputy Governor, Dr Kadri Hamzat, disclosed the plan on Saturday during the monthly environmental sanitation exercise in Festac, Amuwo-Odofin Local Government Area.
Hamzat said the additional trucks would strengthen waste evacuation across Lagos and support Private Sector Participation operators already responsible for refuse collection in many communities.
“The state government will be bringing in another 220 trucks to make sure that we supplement our PSP,” he said.
The intervention comes amid growing concern over waste evacuation in parts of Lagos, where increasing population, urban expansion and pressure on existing infrastructure have continued to challenge environmental management efforts.
Hamzat identified the continuous movement of people into the state as one of the major factors driving waste generation.
“A lot of people are coming to Lagos, and therefore they generate waste. So part of what you can see that we are doing is that we are getting many more trucks to actually go and evacuate,” he said.
According to the deputy governor, the additional fleet will give the state greater capacity to respond to areas where existing refuse evacuation arrangements are struggling to cope with demand.
Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial hub and one of Africa’s most populous urban centres, attracts people daily for employment, business and other economic opportunities, a trend that has also placed enormous pressure on housing, transport, drainage and sanitation infrastructure.
Hamzat said government investment in additional trucks was therefore intended to ensure that increasing waste generation did not overwhelm existing collection systems.
He, however, warned that government intervention alone would not solve the problem without the cooperation of residents.
The deputy governor urged households and businesses to patronise accredited PSP operators rather than unregulated cart pushers, warning that waste collected outside the recognised system could end up being dumped indiscriminately.
“What we need our people to also do is to make sure that they patronise their PSP, not the cart pushers, because they are not organised,” Hamzat said.
“You don’t know where the waste is ending up.”
The warning reflects longstanding concerns about indiscriminate waste disposal across parts of the metropolis, particularly in drainage channels, roadsides, medians and other unauthorised locations.
Such practices have also raised environmental concerns because waste dumped in drainage channels can obstruct the movement of stormwater and worsen flooding during periods of heavy rainfall.
Hamzat said maintaining a clean environment must therefore become a daily responsibility rather than an activity restricted to the state’s monthly sanitation exercise.
“We cannot be a people without a healthy environment. It doesn’t matter what we do, a cleaner environment is what makes a city or a state sustainable,” he said.
The deputy governor called on residents to take greater responsibility for the cleanliness of their homes, streets and communities while supporting the state’s regulated waste collection system.
He said the government’s efforts to improve environmental management would be more effective if residents changed practices that contribute to indiscriminate dumping.
Hamzat also addressed environmental management concerns in Festac, where responsibilities are shared between different authorities.
He acknowledged that the Federal Housing Authority has specific responsibilities within the area but stressed that residents, property owners and managers must still comply with environmental regulations established by the Lagos State Government.
The deployment of the 220 trucks is expected to strengthen refuse evacuation and reduce pressure on PSP operators, particularly in densely populated communities where waste generation frequently outpaces collection.
The intervention also underscores the scale of the environmental challenge confronting Lagos as population growth continues to place pressure on public infrastructure and basic services.
For the state government, however, expanding the waste evacuation fleet is only one part of the solution.
The bigger challenge will be ensuring that the trucks are efficiently deployed, PSP operators remain accountable and residents comply with approved waste disposal procedures.
Hamzat maintained that Lagos could only achieve its ambition of becoming a cleaner and more sustainable city through a combination of government investment and public responsibility.
With 220 additional compactor trucks now being introduced into the waste management system, the government is betting that stronger evacuation capacity, combined with greater compliance by residents, can begin to reverse the mounting refuse problem confronting Africa’s biggest urban economy.
