Lagos ready to tackle flooding through provision of robust infrastructure, says Commissioner

The Lagos State Government on Monday restated that the present administration would continue to ramp up its capacity by providing resilient infrastructure across the metropolis to proffer a lasting solution to flooding issues in the state.

The Commissioner for The Environment and Water Resources, Mr. Tokunbo Wahab, made this known when he featured on a popular TV interview recently, stating that in the last two years, the Ministry had cleaned over 50 kilometres of secondary collectors and had dredged/maintained about 30 primary channels across the state.

The Commissioner, who alluded to the torrential rainfall that lasted over 14 hours in Lagos recently and its effect on some parts of Ikorodu, said remedial measures have been immediately put in place.

According to him, “What happened in Ikorodu was that the contractor had been on site and had allowed the construction to go on. He didn’t know it was going to be such heavy rainfall. When it started raining, the government appealed to him to free the downstream sector, so that the storm water would recede and people could have their normal lives back”.

He explained further that NIMEX gave a forecast as early as March, and by April, the Ministry commenced massive advocacy and also briefed Lagosians about five times in the past three months, stressing that Lagosians were informed that they would experience more rains this year than they had last year, based on the forecast.

He added that based on the rainfall predictions, residents living in low-lying areas such as Agboyi, Agiliti, Itowolo, and Ajegunle communities were advised to move to the uplands pending when the flood water recedes.

Wahab said the government had also ensured that the Emergency Flood Abatement Gang (EFAG) had cleaned about 666,000 of the drainage system/manholes statewide across all LGAs/LCDAs all year round.

He said the narrative people tend to avoid is that climate change issues are real-life issues, saying in the past few weeks, countries that either don’t experience this sort of flooding challenge are experiencing it.

He recalled that in 2024, contracts were awarded and contractors had moved to sites, stressing that those construction projects usually take between 18 and 24 months before completion because drainage construction is not like something you just pick, plug and play.

The Commissioner emphasised that these drainage constructions take a while to wrap up and complete. As such, the government can’t short-circuit it. “I would like to say again that various drainage contracts have been awarded while contractors have been mobilised and they are on site. This is 2025. We’ve barely spent 12 months on it” he said.

“So drainage construction is ongoing in Ikorodu and various areas in the state. So what we cannot circumvent is to allow contractors to give us a substandard job. If the timeline for a contract, according to the experts, would take 24 months, we would let it run its full course, but the government would continue to put temporary measures in place to mitigate flooding, just like how pumping stations were installed across Lagos Island”.

He added that the drainage construction is ongoing in System 44 in Lekki. System 44A, System 1 (Odo-Iyalaro), which are in three phases with the Iyalaro (the one from Ikeja, the one behind Sheraton, under the new bridge around Opebi and the confluence where it takes the water into the lagoon).

“So by and large, we expected the rains and as a government, resilient measures were in place. We have been doing massive advocacy and we keep doing the advocacy. I would like to reiterate that the present administration has been ramping up the provision of drainage infrastructure statewide”, he stated.