An astute environmentalist whose depth of acumen transverses both the executive and legislative arms of government spanning more than two decades now, Hon. (Engr.) Adebola Rasheed Shabi who is now the House Committee Chairman on Environment (Parastatals) critiqued safety compliance in Lagos State, while also delving into environmental issue which according to him will have been a raw material for power generation if proactively handled as Turkey which generates 10 metric tons of waste avails its citizenry power. He also spoke on other sundry issues in a no holds barred interview with Sunrise News, Olanrewaju Adesanya brings excerpt.
Looking through the line of experience garnered so far, what are clear differences between the executive and the legislative arms of government and what has been your source of strength been in the service back to back?
I was an Executive Secretary and pioneer Executive Chairman of Yaba Local Council Development Area from 2003 to 2008, after which I became the Chief Executive Officer CEO of the Lagos State Environmental Protection Agency (LASEPA) for nine years, I later served shortly as Special Adviser to the Governor on Cleaner Lagos Initiative in 2018-2019.While I was serving in the executive capacity I had total responsibility for capital projects, revenues that accrues. We bring our budget to be screened and approved by the house. I will strongly tell you it is an experience for me. To give corrective measures that is the duty of a legislator. I will say at the executive arm we are not so careful but the legislators ensure we are doing the right thing.
I am a chemical engineer, I schooled abroad went on scholarship to study chemical engineering in Romania and I did my first and second degree in chemical engineering after that I came back home for my National Youth Service Corp, prior to that I got my admission for PhD in London University in 1986,on pesticide chemistry but due to funds and other logistics I said to myself I already had my masters what did I need the PhD for?
But today I am planning to do my PhD, I did my second Masters in UNILAG on environmental management in 2012-2014 and when you talk of the environment, chemistry is the basic, so when I was the GM of LASEPA it was like I got back home. I started my PhD in University of Ibadan in 2015 but unfortunately I had an accident sometimes in 2016,2017 and I have to defer it and I am thinking of going back to complete it, because I already finished the first segment of it remaining the second aspect, so I need to go and resuscitate the admission back.
Lagos Mainland Constituency 2 the scope of coverage and your legislative representation, what has it been like thus far?
I represent Lagos Mainland 2 constituency which precisely starting from Adekunle by the council to Alago Meji-Simpson-Faneye linking Old Yaba road, Muritala way,Borno-Way, Spencer then Olonade,Yaba,Simpson on the other side,Adegunwa,Lious Avenue,Noble,Tokunbo then coming towards Oyadiran Estate Sabo by City College School,going down to Onike, Unilag Road,Ajayi street,Araromi Street,Majaro and Doyin,by MFM, Unilag down there then Iwaya Road,Owodunni up to that junction of Oko Agbon where Makoko meets it.
That is the order then coming to this side that is Yaba,Birrel,Queens College,down to Onike back to Herbert Macaulay down to YabaTech junction by Jibowu to Igboobi Sabe back to inside Yabatech to Abule Oja,Abule Ijesa that is it.
As a legislator, by my experience here many Nigerians don’t know the work of legislators, many believe when you are a legislator you come here to pluck money,not knowing that you don’t have a budget of your own and you know what, I don’t blame them because they form their opinions about us from information right activists put out there.
I have an example here, I was somewhere and one of the activist was making a claim about the National Assembly budget, saying yes the budget of National Assembly is 70 billion so after calculating each Honourable member 100 million and that of Senator X amount, forgetting that the budget of National Assembly comprises of the Assembly commission where you have over 400 to 500 staff that their salary is in there, running cost, training are all there, is it for the legislator? No.
Why are you misleading the public? So many people had that perception because they believed what the activist are saying,without trying to find out by themselves. When I was at the executive I was the accounting officers of the local government and the agencies I headed. I had the opportunity to do things for people but as a legislator I am on salary and running cost, but everyday you will see people requesting, demanding their mother died, their grand mother this, you know what I tell them?
Tell me what I can facilitate to come to your area. The favour I need from is just simply put mention what is needed in your area which I can facilitate, but all they want is money and when you start giving them money at end of the day when you go back, they are the same people that ask you what have you done in your area? You see what really saved me was the project I did while I was at the local government. So when I was campaigning I was using the projects I did many years back to campaign and some of them are still there today. So as I am talking to you now I have started sinking some boreholes, I did free JAMB distribution, also I was at Unilag few week ago, I gave scholarships to less privilege people and I said to another set of people, where you have 4.2-4.5 point I am going to give ten people scholarships by paying their tuitions and during the last summer vacation, we did summer lessons for school children, SS2 to SS3 after which we gave them back to school kits; school bags, exercise books and the best in the four centres were given notebooks and money.
I am also tying down part of my running cost that once it is up to four, five hundred thousand I am putting solar street lights in selected areas within my constituency, before the end of December we will have that. I also visited Yabatech last week met with the Rector who welcomed me along with his team and I indicated my willingness to partner with them and to hear their problems because it is my constituency and they told me in the staff quarters area that they need borehole, and I said consider it done before the end of this month I’m gonna do that.
These listed are what I have done between eight months, even some of the boreholes I sunk in Iwaya now when I went to commission last week they are still demanding that I get them a generators and I say by the grace of God I will give you generators too. All these I am doing from my running cost and my own private earnings because we are on salary and running cost but people don’t want to hear that.
On Safety standards in Lagos State,can you say we have fared quite well all the while?
It is going to be an understatement to say we are up to date, we are not. Quote me, in this part of the world we are not safety conscious and I want anybody to challenge this, we are not safety conscious. When we build our houses in this part of the world, every room is burglary proved. You have duplex with many bedroom apartment with the living room and dining upstairs and downstairs all burglary proved, in case there is fire upstairs where is the escape route? Are we safety conscious? No. In work places too we are not safety conscious.
When you talk of safety the first thing when you want to start a construction safety must be taken into consideration, you must have safety booths, you must have safety elements, restricted areas must be specified during construction because trucks bringing equipment and materials. So we are still not there.
Look at most of these event centres, before ministry of physical planning and urban development could approve for you, you have to specify the number of people that can be there. In a party where you have 1000 people, immediately in developed countries the police will come and walk everybody out because it is no more safe. Number two in those event centres in case of accident where are the escape routes? Safety we are not so conscious. Now what about hotels?
They run burglary everywhere and it is like one is caged and if anything happens where is the escape routes? So these are the areas we need to look into; hospitality businesses, houses and event centres even in government offices.Look at the house of assembly now, if there is fire look at the escape route.
We have it here but we can still improve, when you talk of safety you relate safety to risk, you know they are synonymous, so everywhere you go to identify the safety risks after which you evaluate and assess what the measures I need to put in place to mitigate it. When they tell the event centre owners you cannot have more than 50 people in this hall, they will say the government is bad,but the government is looking at the safety of the people there.
Anything more than 50 people in that location is not safe for people, it is high time we start giving heavy fines to violators to serve as deterrence to others, but having the political will is a problem, oh! It is our people and all that, we need to come together to ensure safety compliance in every area of our lives.
What roles does dysfunctional drainage channels in some parts of the state have to do with waste water movement?
Our drainage channels are not dysfunctional as you mentioned in your question, rather it is what we all did wrong in our homes, many of us any time it rains, you bring out your garbage and throw into the drainage channels and when it get stocked it blocks the drainage so water coming along that part cannot flow pass it, you know we have the tertiary channels, secondary and the primary drainage channel and the canals before it discharges into the lagoon.
But the canal is a not receiving the water anymore, most of the canals have been overgrown with weeds, because it is not being fed, people dump their waste in it and the nutrients start allowing algae’s to grow on it. The tertiary drainage channels which are the ones from the inner streets, who is clearing it? No one, that is the responsibility of the local government authorities, but they are not doing it anymore. We have the local government, the state and the federal. The state should ensure that the local government rises up to its responsibilities, how?
Your primary responsibility is to clear the tertiary channels, when we were young it is the local governments with the supervision of the “Wolewoles’ sanitary inspectors, they will come to inspect the house-‘wolewole kilori,tanwinjin yanmuyanmu’,are we still doing that? We are not. Ministry of environment drainage channels look at the secondary and primary drainages to the canal but you are been disconnected. There is a disconnect from the tertiary to the others, so it is not feeding the canals and anytime it rains all the area is flooded because it is not feeding the canals that supposed to discharge into the lagoon.
I still intend to peruse the judgement on the last Saturday environmental sanitation case and talk about it because we need to revisit that. In those days last Saturdays there is sanitation but let us leave that aside now, local government sanitary inspectors (wolewole) should stand up now ,in front of any house any drainage that is not flowing, that is silted that house should be sanctioned.
If we don’t want to go back to the last Saturday sanitation thing because of the three hours restriction, everyone should do the sanitation anytime you like as long as your frontage is not blocked. If your frontage is blocked you have an abatement, they will give the first abatement-clear your frontage, if the blockage is coming from elsewhere use a wire goose to block it from coming to your house, we come next time and observe no change we shut your house or you go and pay fifty thousand naira to government.
But will that work because of political will? We need to close our eyes to ensure we have a cleaner and healthier environment. To have enough political will to get things done, failure to do this will get you no where. I’m being blunt with you that is the right way to go about it, when I was a local government chairman when your frontage is blocked we sanction you. When you are sanctioned because of defaulting environmental procedure, it is the responsibility of you and I. we have identified the fact that it is because we stopped the last Saturday environmental sanitation exercise that this is happening, what are the best step to take? It is that everyone should clean his frontage, failure to so do attracts sanction. When we use few houses as scapegoat everybody will comply.
HON ADEBOLA SHABI REPRESENTING LAGOS MAINLAND CONSTITUENCY 2
Landfills and government approach at ridding the environment of air pollution emanating from the likes of Olusosun and the other one on Igando axis of the state?
Olusosun wasn’t a dumpsite,what happened was that the place far back 1972 up until ’74 that was where gulvanti excavated its sand to construct Ikorodu road and olusosun became a pit as due to the excavation and people now took advantage of the existing pit there, bringing their waste from Alapere and it became a dumpsite in 1976,that is the story of Olusosun. It is a fact that development met Olusosun already existing there,not the other way round and in the sense of siting an engineered sanitary landfill,one of the conditions is that it must not be on the highway.
It must be off the highway but Olusosun is on the highway,Igando is on the highway,development them there so when it now got to that stage,the government ought to have been more proactive in the sense of the management of our waste, because we are in the twenty-first century in other climes nobody uses a dumpsites like this anymore, we have engineering landfill but waste are being dumped in Olusosun and the leechets coming from the waste percolating into the underground thereby polluting the underground water in Ikeja environs,the same leechet go down to our lagoon too.
When waste in Olusosun are compressed by anaerobic decomposition it brings out methane gas,which we are wasting,menthane gas contributes about 35-40 percent to climate change,global warming and the government is spending a lot of money on climate change summit. Why are we deceiving ourself? When we are contributing to the effect of global warming,and we are saying we are fighting what are we fighting?
Go and check methane contributes 35-40 percent of the greenhouse gases responsible for global warming while carbondioxide contributes about 55 percent, the remaining percentage are water vapour and other small gases that contributes to the ozone layer depletion. Now the same methane gas we are talking about could be used for power as well,why are we being so wasteful? We generate over 20metric tons of waste in Lagos on a daily basis,this is Lagos not Nigeria-Turkey as a country generate 10metric tons and they generate electricity from it,so why are we wasting resources in this part of the world?
Turkey generates 10metric tons of waste while Lagos generates 20 metric tons and we cannot have our power therefrom I don’t know how to add this up,but I have seen something about us that we speak more grammar than the British people,we talk more and we work less, as an engineer we don’t talk much grammar,we act more than talking. Imagine us generating such huge waste and we cannot turn it around for our good! Even now when the federal government has devolve the power generation off the exclusive now on the concurrent list.
Now look at Abia state generating its power I read about it three days ago, 24 hours electricity in Aba. In those when I was the GM of LASEPA,we the GM of EPA’s all over Nigeria we had a meeting in Abia State and Aba-Owerri road used to be the dirtiest road but today they have made use of the waste generating their own power. What are we doing here? Speaking too much grammar, grammar is not everything it is about being proactive.
Our wetlands in Lagos are gradually going into extinction, where do we go from here?
Wet lands are water receptors,waste water from all parts gather there before discharging into the lagoons, that is why it is called wetland but today we have encroached and built on them. We have a department in the ministry of environment-conservation department which deals with the wetland area too,ministry of environment should tell us how many of our wetlands have not been encroached upon? They have been encroached upon and it is not the fault of the ministry of environment,I give it to them,ministry of environment has been protecting our wetlands but Ministry of Physical Planning and Urban Development will give approval to build on wetlands without recourse back to ask from the Ministry of Environment, we are not coordinated at all, in the system here in Lagos State they are not coordinated because there exist a synergy within the system before physical planning can approve get in touch with the Ministry of Environment they will tell you this a wetland you can’t build on it and when you encroach on wetland there is nowhere the water will go. What are we talking about flooding?
We are putting too much pressure on the Commissioner of Environment and the ministry, when we are the course of their problems because where the water suppoised to go as a receptor before discharging into the lagoon has been encroached upon, so what are we saying,water must find its way,when we talk about waste being dumped in our drainage channels,talk about wetlands too it is so germane.We should preserve and protect our wetlands.
They are our protectors for the future being receptors for us, they will prevent flooding but we have encroached and built on it and the Land Bureau will allocate the lands arbitrarily to people. Does that make sense to you? It doesn’t. I am working a bill regarding that as well as on sanitation too I am studying the judgement, but if unable to I will do something on the house frontage channel blockage. There must be fines on that.
What will be your counsel for Nigerians given the economic hardship bedevilling the nation?
My advise to the people the way things are in the country today, I want to plead with everyone of you Mr. President feels your pains,likewise Mr. Governor of this state also feels your pains, so for emergency palliatives the state government has reduced the fare by 25 percent,on agriculture and food palliative the state is giving 330,000 households rice,garri and yam flour, and about 1000 existing bukkas where people can go and to eat with their LASRRA cards,healthwise there is free delivery,free ante natal and for people with high blood pressure free drug refill on that ailment and diabetics.
All these things the state government has made it available for you please lagosians go and register,get your LASRRA card and benefit from these. It is not about APC alone, the state government has constituted a committee which I am a part of, we have PDP member as a part of the committee,Labour Party, Civil Society Organizations and religious fathers too both Christian and Muslim therein, so it is not about APC agenda. Everywhere I go I preach about this that don’t think it is our people alone,it is for all Lagosians the government is for you. Whichever political party you belong, this is your government, take advantage of it.