Sir: The Lagos State government has stepped-up its environmental regeneration and urban renewal drive as part of efforts to bequeath a safe and smart city for residents as well as improve the socio-economic development of the state. This is quite logical and laudable.

Over the years, due to untoward practices that defile the environment, the rainy season has become a harrowing period in most parts of the state as tenements get flooded, structural stability of buildings are threatened, while some even give way completely. Evidentially, this is the direct consequence of compromising the drainage channels. More worrisome is the fact that water channels are encroached, thereby limiting its capacity to discharge high volumes of storm water.

Developers in most cases appropriated drainage alignments and canals and annexed them. Traders and artisans build shanties in the way of storm water, and obstruct its flow. The drainage channels from the primary, secondary and even the tertiary ones also called gutter in front residential buildings have been turned to receptacles of waste. The result is that it overflows and spills unto the adjoining roads and the environment at large.

Although the topography of Lagos is one that makes flash floods inevitable, residents’ non-chalant attitude, however, compounds the woes of the city. Wetlands that are supposed to reduce shocks from flooding are on a daily basis encroached upon in the course of producing infrastructure and no one seems to be bothered. The wetlands ought to serve as a buffer for excess storm water until such a time that it can flow into the lagoon or rivers. Some of the wetlands hold water round the year.

The wetlands are encroached; hence the disruption of the ecosystem and unending flooding that most times claims hundreds of lives and destruction to properties worth millions of naira. It is worthy to note that the consequences of this recklessness stare us in the face and most times, the citizens blame the government. What do we do when neighbours dumb refuse into the channels because they don’t want to pay waste management authority for refuse collection? Naturally, one would expect that the citizen should first police themselves to do the right thing, but most often aid in perpetuating unlawful acts against the environment. Many turn blind eyes to activities, which we know will have direct consequences on livelihood.

Gross abuse of the state’s urban and regional planning is legendary as shanties and illegal structures are attached to perimeter fences in public and private properties, thus, defacing an otherwise eye-popping property all in the name of trading. It is a sad reality that some still oppose the restoration or prevention of such abuses.

It is gladdening that the present administration of Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State has demonstrated the political will to reverse this ugly trend through renewed effort to regenerate the environment, separate illegal structures from drainage channels and desilt the drains.   The lesson here is that if you are a contravention, it is time for voluntary-compliance.

Tunde Alao wrote from Lagos.