Environmental Saturdays: Nigeria's Abandoned Good Idea by Elizabeth Obadina

Our Environment: thoughts from Hightown Writers

Waste collectors in Lagos

I once caused a riot, well a fight, on a mighty city rubbish tip in Lagos, Nigeria. I had used an ‘Environmental Saturday’ to clear out and tidy up, and, thinking to help our rubbish collector who swayed to our gate every weekday with a leaning tower of baskets of domestic detritus wobbling on the handlebars of his bike, I had tried to lessen his Monday load by disposing of rubbish, real trash, by myself that Saturday afternoon. But on Monday he was not thankful but angry that I had deprived him of scavenging potentially recyclable materials.

I remonstrated with him, pointing out that I had held back – for him - anything in a recognisable condition; a broken kettle, a torn calendar, unidentifiable parts of plastic toys, spent batteries and such like. I really had only thrown away what I thought was pure rubbish. However his contacts from the dump reported back to him that I had thrown away stuff of value. I had seen for myself three lads scramble to wrench open my car boot and to forensically sort my rubbish followed by rough pushing and shoving, fighting over the spoils really, by those souls eking a living by scavenging off the dump. I had done our waste collector no favours and had to beg, bribe and promise him never to take waste disposal into my own hands ever again before he would agree to continue collecting rubbish from our house.

Pause for a little back history: There wasn’t then, and probably still isn’t now, any waste collection service in Lagos as we enjoy in the West. ‘Environmental Sanitation Days’ began in Lagos in March 1984 to tackle the growing problem of city waste – and these were in the days before plastic waste became ubiquitous. These ‘Environmental Saturdays’ were part of the larger War Against Indiscipline (WAI) law enacted by the then 3-month-old regime of Major General Muhammadu Buhari. Like most national leaders the world over Nigeria’s new rulers drew on their training to govern: they were military so they ‘declared war’ on social problems. Declaring ‘war’ on the social problems of Africa’s biggest mega city appealed to Nigerians weary of corrupt civilian politicians.

By the time we arrived back in the country in the mid-1980s after a spell of London living, sanitation days had become a national institution. Every last Saturday of the month citizens were bound to stay home between 7am and 10am – in 2021 we’d call it a three-hour lockdown - and clean their compounds and the streets of their immediate neighbourhood. Sandy forecourts were swept with brooms, street gutters were emptied and ‘Witches Knickers’ as the Irish call plastic bags festooning trees and fences, were cut free and thrown away. A new fleet of rubbish collection trucks had been purchased and workers from the Lagos Waste Management Authority would trawl through areas scooping up vast piles of garbage heaped along the roadsides.

There were strict penalties, physical punishment and public censure for people who were caught out and about during an ‘environmental’ and surprisingly, even the worst neighbourhoods emerged from this monthly spring cleaning looking as good a slum can look. Fast forward ten years. By the mid-nineties the public appetite for ‘environmental’ was waning. The battle against waste was relentless. Plastic was replacing plantain leaves as food wrappers; clean water, courtesy of a new World Bank scheme, was being illegally tapped and sold in little plastic bags to thirsty commuters who tossed the bags away; plastic shopping bags became cheaper meaning fewer plastic bags were being reused and glass returnable bottles for soft drinks were beginning to be supplemented with plastic bottles. By the time we left Lagos it was common to see the lagoon choked with plastic bags and many of the shiny new waste collection trucks had broken down. No one wanted to create smelly rubbish heaps in their streets if they were not going to be collected. And the tips grew and the expensive incineration plants bought to burn the waste lay inoperative for a variety of reasons.

Eventually as Lagos’ population swelled to between 15-20 million people in the first two decades of the twenty first century, landfill sites and rubbish dumps overflowed to colossal proportions and ‘Environmental Sanitation Days’ were abandoned. The idea had had had its day. In 2016 courts ruled that confining people to their homes infringed their liberty and freedom of movement.  At the end of November 2016 ‘Environmental Saturdays’ came to an end. Ironically it was almost a year to the day since President Buhari, the originator of the scheme as Head of the Federal Military Government in 1984, returned to power as Nigeria’s 7^th democratically elected civilian president.

Plans to reintroduce ‘environmentals’ in Lagos, in late 2019 were derailed by the Covid 19 lockdown. Meanwhile, otherwise unemployed young scavengers from all over the federation descend on Lagos, Kano, Ibadan and Abuja – Nigeria’s biggest cities - to scrape for a living by collecting waste from the millions who live there. Some plastic waste can be sold on to recycling plants who turn single use plastic bottles into fibres for cloth making and pillow stuffing. Some food and drink producers like Nestle and CocaCola are addressing the problem of plastic packaging of their products; but these initiatives are but drops in the ocean of waste flooding Nigerian towns and cities.

A quarter of all Africans live in Nigeria, 211,400,708 people by the latest estimate.  And the numbers are growing rapidly as millions of people displaced by ecological crises, like the encroaching Sahara, and security crises, like Boko Haram insurrection and banditry in oil producing areas, seek refuge and employment in the nation’s ballooning cities. Globally Lagos is predicted to become one of the world’s three largest cities within the next thirty years and each new resident produces waste.

It was never enough, but for thirty years ‘Environmental Saturdays’ held the wave of waste at bay and focused the nation’s energies on cleaning up. In the nineties most individuals, schools, youth and community organisations did their bit. It was a good idea - even if some people I knew used it as an excuse for a long lie-in once a month on a Saturday!

A Labour of Sisyphus:
Youngsters collecting plastic waste from roadsides, gutters and beaches
 to earn an income from recycling facilities in Lagos ... photography Yekeen Akinwale

 See also: New Internationalist: December 1993 Letter from Lagos by Elizabeth Obadina