Rhodes-Vivour Faults Sanwo-Olu’s Waste Evacuation Directive, Calls It Admission of Failure
The 2023 Lagos gubernatorial candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, has criticised Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu’s waste evacuation directive, describing it as an admission of failure.
ThelensNG reports that Governor Sanwo-Olu gave the order on Thursday, citing the recent build-up of refuse in some parts of the state.
Reacting to the development in a post on X (formerly Twitter), Rhodes-Vivour wrote: “Your Excellency, unsurprisingly, this statement is an admission of failure, not a solution.”
He argued that Lagosians do not need periodic emergency evacuations of mountains of refuse, stressing that what residents need is a functional waste management system that prevents waste from accumulating in the first place.
He noted that for years, residents have endured overflowing dumps, uncollected refuse, blocked drainage channels, and worsening environmental conditions despite billions of naira allocated to environmental management.
“The fact that you now have to ‘direct an immediate scale-up’ after waste has already overwhelmed communities is an utter failure of leadership,” Rhodes-Vivour asserted.
While acknowledging that Lagos generates over 13,000 tonnes of waste daily, he noted that this is not a surprise. He stressed that it is a known reality that should be planned for through efficient collection, waste sorting, recycling infrastructure, transfer stations, waste-to-energy investments, and transparent performance management of operators.
“Like your commissioner, you cannot continue to shift responsibility to citizens to ‘bag their waste properly’ when many communities are left without reliable and affordable waste collection services,” he stated.
Rhodes-Vivour further acknowledged that citizens have a responsibility to dispose of waste properly.
He, however, argued that the government has an even greater responsibility to provide the infrastructure and systems that make proper disposal possible.
He emphasised that the government cannot continue operating reactive clean-up exercises and issuing public relations statements whenever refuse piles become impossible to ignore.
Rhodes-Vivour maintained that Lagos deserves a modern, accountable, and sustainable waste management system — one that measures success not by the number of trucks deployed after a crisis, but by the absence of the crisis itself.
“Again, Your Excellency, after seven years in office, why is Lagos still battling a problem that should have been solved through competent planning, execution, and oversight?” he asked.
