By Olayinka Balogun

Sir: Strong personalities can accelerate decisions and challenge bureaucratic inertia. But personality is not legacy. Institutions are.

That distinction matters in assessing environmental governance in Lagos State. Since becoming Commissioner for the Environment and Water Resources in 2023, Tokunbo Wahab has been a prominent figure in debates over flooding, drainage encroachments and compliance. His visibility has clarified responsibility and given enforcement urgency. But it also raises a question: what happens when he leaves?

Environmental governance is already larger than one commissioner. The Lagos State Waste Management Authority (LAWMA) manages solid waste; the Lagos State Environmental Protection Agency (LASEPA) regulates pollution; the Lagos State Parks and Gardens Agency (LASPARK) oversees parks, trees and urban greening; and the Wastewater Management Office handles sewage and wastewater.

Drainage and water-resources structures, local governments, planning agencies, transport authorities and public-health institutions share related responsibilities. The challenge is making this network function as a coherent system.

Consider drainage. If the ministry identifies a channel as environmentally critical while a planning authority permits development across it, government creates tomorrow’s demolition controversy. Environmental information and planning approvals should rely on the same authoritative spatial data, so developers know whether a drainage corridor, wetland, floodplain or other restriction affects a property. Prevention should come before construction, not demolition after violation.

The same principle applies to waste. LAWMA cannot produce a clean city if large developments lack adequate storage and collection arrangements. Private operators need functional equipment, residents need reliable services, and government must not demand citizen discipline while its own system fails.

The waste-evacuation difficulties of 2026 illustrated this reality. Wahab apologised after a significant deterioration in collection, while the governor ordered LAWMA and related agencies to scale up evacuation. The lesson is that credibility can grow when government acknowledges failure and corrects it. The next step is making correction automatic rather than dependent on political intervention.

Institutions should establish what happens when operators miss routes, which thresholds trigger action, where complaints go, how quickly they are resolved and what data show whether an intervention worked. Those answers should not depend on a commissioner seeing a photograph on social media.

The same applies to enforcement. LASEPA’s regulations should operate regardless of its leadership. Noise limits, industrial pollution standards and drainage setbacks should not fluctuate with political influence.

In July 2026, Wahab clarified that Lagos’s monthly environmental sanitation exercise did not restrict movement and that arrests merely for moving around were unlawful. The episode underscored the need for rules that are clearly written, understood and consistently applied. Institutionalisation reduces the risk that enforcement becomes whatever an officer believes government policy means.

Technology can strengthen continuity. Air-quality measurements can be published; drainage infrastructure, trees and wetlands can be mapped; waste trucks can be tracked; complaints can receive reference numbers and closure timelines; and enforcement notices can be documented electronically. Public dashboards could show whether government is meeting its targets.

Continuity matters because Lagos’s environmental problems operate on timelines far longer than political tenures. The Lagos Climate Adaptation and Resilience Plan addresses sea-level rise, extreme rainfall and heat through investments in resilient infrastructure, wastewater treatment, waste management and coastal protection.

No governor or commissioner can complete that agenda alone. Trees planted today will mature under unknown administrations. Drainage projects will require maintenance after inauguration, climate-finance commitments will extend into succeeding governments, and waste-conversion infrastructure will need regulation long after ribbon-cutting ceremonies are forgotten.

Legacy, therefore, requires building systems robust enough for successors to operate without their original architects. Nobody should need Tokunbo Wahab personally to keep Lagos’s drainage rights of way ree, or Babajide Sanwo-Olu personally to ensure that air-quality monitoring continues. The environmental architecture must become larger than both men.

That is the ultimate test of reforms undertaken under their watch: not whether enforcement was energetic while they were present, but whether systems endure after they leave.

Five years from now, are drainage alignments still protected? Has recycling continued? Is climate finance supporting resilience? Are today’s trees still standing? Do industries know that pollution carries consequences? Can residents expect predictable waste collection, and does environmental data remain publicly accessible?

If those systems endure, Lagos would have built institutions with memory—how cities avoid beginning again every four years.

Olayinka Balogun wrote from Okota, Lagos.