Oluropo Ayodele is an Associate Professor of Community Health and Medical Sociology, Crawford University, Ogun State. In this interview with MAUREEN IHUA-MADUENYI, he says that for the Lagos State Government to effectively management waste, communities must be involved
As a professor of community health, what do you think can be done to address the issue of waste management in the country and Lagos in particular?
The issue of waste management and flood control is a serious problem and it seems no government has been able to control it. In fact, there was a military coup in Nigeria that one of the reasons for taking over was waste management in Lagos; I think it was during Abacha’s regime. That is to say that historically, it has been a problem and the government has been trying but evidently, they are not succeeding.
One of the reasons I think they are not succeeding is because they are doing it through the usual civil service structure; they don’t want to be innovative and think outside the box. The idea that we are proposing is to use community-based approach to solve the problem and I didn’t just arrive at that, it was after thorough investigation and analysis, because as an academic, you have to be innovative. The civil service structure is failing because it is not innovative. So, the idea is based on empirical information that I have gathered over the years.
One of them is that waste management and flood control ought to be tackled at the household level; and how did I arrive at that? It was based on sound research and empirical work. There were two lecturers from the Lagos State University, who did a study for the Lagos State Waste Management Authority and concluded that the only way to solve the problem of waste management in Lagos is to find a way of involving the women at household level.
There was another study done by another lecturer for the UNFPA, the same thing she came up with that the community must be involved, particularly women. In my own study, which I did recently that involved about six communities in Lagos, including Orimedo, Lawanson and Amukoko, and sponsored by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency, I found that a lot of people were dumping their refuse by the roadside, in uncompleted buildings and the drains.
I did the study in about six communities, which means a lot of people are doing it and I concluded that if we were to have a proper handle of waste management and flood control, we must find a way of involving the women at the household level.
How do we involve them? That is how the community-based approach came up. It did not just come like that, it is based on what I have done before. Several years ago, when I was the country director of a USAID project, I did a project that the entry level was prevention of childhood diseases through immunisation and involving the community. We did it successfully in Lagos, Kano and Abia. It was so successful that the USAID recommended that model for other programmes in the country.
Now that I am growing gracefully, I feel this may be a legacy I can leave for the country, and that is setting up what I call Community Partner for Clean Environment in communities in Lagos or any city that is interested in doing it. All I just want to do is to get the communities involved in a sustainable and enduring waste management process.
How do we do it? It is the same template that we used several years ago; the people who did it then are still very much alive; all we need to do is bring them on board in an institutional setting and this time, Crawford University is prepared to house that kind of a project.
To get it started, we need to identify communities in local governments, because the whole local government will be too big. I have done the arithmetic; that is, we do it using only 0.2 per cent of the population that will give us a rough estimate to start with. Once we get that, we start the nitty gritty such as an inventory of the resources of that community. Then we will identify the people living in the community based on our inventory, we will use the 80:20 principle, which is 80 per cent women and 20 per cent men.
Then there will be stakeholders’ meeting that must be implemented at the community level and not in a fancy hotel, but somewhere within the community where they will be given the problems to solve. One thing I discovered using the community approach is that they are always ready to respond but they have been neglected, which is the problem of the civil service structure. The structure has been hijacked by the elite and made all social services supply-oriented instead of demand-driven; it should be demand-driven, sustained and owned by the community because the waste we are talking about is generated by the community; so, how do you want to control it without involving them. Even the cart pushers the government is trying to get off the streets can become useful under this initiative.
What exactly is going to be the roles of these men and women?
They won’t have their roles until we educate them and some of the things we will use to educate them will be community empowerment and community participation; there is also what we call democracy and governance; the fourth is micro credit and training; and the fifth is environmental sanitation.
All these we will develop a syllabus to be used locally to train them. It will not be in English but pidgin or the prevalent dialect in the community. Training will be organised by people who understand the community; we will also develop a criteria to identify their interest and love for it. Not just coming to the community to share food, though it will be part of it.
It is when we do that that their roles will come out. We will then tell them that we have this problem and want them to be part of the solution; they will come up with the idea in no time. The micro credit will help them with sorting at the household level; we have done this at Crawford University, where we allowed the house keepers to sort waste into plastic, bottle and so on; if it can be done there, why not at the household level? The civil service does not believe in that; it believes in recruiting youths who cannot do that kind of thing. Instead of doing that, why don’t we allow the community to be involved and own it?
If this approach is implemented, it is going to put the government on their toes but is the government ready to do that? That is going to be the problem, because it will make them to be alive to their responsibility. If waste is generated at the household level, it must be a priority at that level too not the way they are doing it with the PSP and trucks cutting corners and those other ugly things that are elements of corruption.
The communities will do the job very well and will not cheat. Most countries in the world use the communities, when you centralise it, you run the risk of not making it work and that is what is happening in Lagos State.
What is your opinion on the current waste management system in Lagos?
The waste management system in Lagos is a chain; there are components linked to several chains and in that case, if you don’t start well, it can never work. The best way to start is from the household and the family level, and they have neglected that and it is not their fault, it is because they don’t understand and are doing things the way they have always done it using general order. But you have to think outside the box to be able to solve the problem of garbage because it will forever occur; it is part of living. To solve it, we need to develop simple sustainable community-based initiatives not haphazard system like they are doing in Lagos State. Those will work after the communities have accepted that these are their own problems to solve.
Are you saying that once the problem of waste is addressed, flooding issues will automatically be addressed?
Certainly. If most people are dumping their waste on roads and the drains and we train them and they stop, there will be nothing to block the drains and there will be free flow of water. But there can be no free flow of water now because most people dump their waste in the canals, because they lack knowledge. The government has to painstakingly work on them, but if they feel they can do it themselves, it will not work.
Although building on waterways is also an issue but the community-based approach will solve these problems. People just don’t want to do this, because it will take away power from the elite and they don’t like that.
I don’t want to take on Lagos as a whole, but we can start a pilot in a local government, for instance, Alimosho, and take it from there.
What will be the role of the government in this initiative?
The role of the government is quite enormous and it will be to provide infrastructure and maps of the communities. The government will have to provide the manpower, and they have what I call latent resources within the system. There are environmental sanitation officers and each state has a school of health technology where these people are trained in hundreds. But they don’t do anything other than harassing poor women who sell petty things.
These are the people we will bring into this project and make them function, in advanced countries this is what they do, they prefer to work with communities. It won’t cost the government much money; it will only cost re-orientation and also help to fight corruption, which is why we are including empowerment.
This idea of not taking care of dumpsites will end, because the government will be held accountable by the communities.
Should there be penalties for indiscriminate dumping of waste and what should these be?
Before you put sanction on anything, you must create an alternative. If you say people should not urinate in a place, for instance, you have to provide toilets. For people not to dump indiscriminately, then you must find a way of disposing waste appropriately. If not, any decree on indiscriminate dumping will not work.
END
Be the first to comment