By: Habeeb Adewale Tajudeen
Postgraduate Student, Research and Public Policy
University of Lagos, Nigeria
Lagos woke up this week to a nightmare it has faced repeatedly for decades, only this time, it appeared sharper, more disruptive, and far more humiliating. Sunday’s torrential rainfall submerged major transport corridors including the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Ikorodu Road, the Apapa-Oshodi Expressway, and the Lekki-Epe Expressway, while roads across Oshodi, Mushin, Surulere, Agege, and Gbagada became practically impassable. Floodwaters forced the shutdown of a terminal at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, leading to the relocation of operations by Air France-KLM, Ethiopian Airlines, and Fly Gabon. In Lekki, families spent the night battling mosquitoes inside homes transformed into shallow lakes. By Tuesday, the Nigerian Meteorological Agency had issued another flash flood warning for Lagos, confirming that the crisis was far from over.
Flooding is not new to Lagos. Yet, every flooding season follows the same predictable cycle of blame-shifting. Government officials routinely point to flash floods, rising lagoon tides, and climate realities, while frustrated residents continue to interpret the situation as evidence of systemic governance failure and poor urban planning. Somewhere between these competing narratives lies the uncomfortable truth: Lagos is not merely drowning from rainfall; it is drowning from accumulated policy failures, reactive governance, and weakened urban resilience.
To be fair, government efforts cannot be dismissed entirely. Lagos State has maintained a year-round drainage maintenance programme intended to move flood control beyond seasonal emergency responses. The ongoing rehabilitation of the System 1 drainage channel serving Ikeja, Maryland, Bariga, and Oworonsoki reflects some recognition of the city’s infrastructure challenges. Prior to the latest downpour, the state government also issued flood risk advisories identifying Lekki, Surulere, Agege, Apapa, Alimosho, and several other areas as highly vulnerable. At the federal level, the 2026 Annual Flood Outlook had similarly classified Lagos among the states at highest risk this year. In that sense, the warning architecture existed, and to some extent, it functioned.
However, early warning without adequate absorptive capacity merely predicts disaster; it does not prevent it.
The collapse in waste management preceding this flooding episode sits dangerously close to the centre of the crisis. Lagos generates between 13,000 and 14,000 metric tonnes of waste daily, yet LAWMA reportedly operates with only 77 compactor trucks and five skip trucks for a population approaching 27 million people. Throughout June, residents across Mushin, Egbeda, Surulere, and Alimosho repeatedly reported that PSP operators had been absent for weeks despite continued monthly payments. The result was predictable: refuse accumulated along road medians and drainage channels, creating the exact obstructions that converted heavy rainfall into widespread urban paralysis.
Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu’s emergency intervention, which reportedly cleared about 418,500 tonnes of waste in May alone, was undoubtedly significant. Yet it was fundamentally reactive, an intervention driven more by mounting public embarrassment than by sustainable preventive planning.
More importantly, the evidence complicates the simplistic claim that PSP operators alone are responsible for the breakdown. Drivers operating at the Olusosun dumpsite, which is managed by LAWMA itself, described situations where trucks remained stranded for up to four days because deteriorated internal access roads trapped vehicles in mud. The situation was further worsened by inadequate caterpillar machines unable to compress refuse efficiently and by contractor disputes linked to rising diesel costs. In effect, the very infrastructure meant to support waste evacuation has itself become part of the bottleneck.
Land use policy represents perhaps the most politically sensitive dimension of the flooding conversation, and unsurprisingly, it is the area government discusses least comfortably. Lagos State Commissioner for the Environment and Water Resources, Tokunbo Wahab, recently admitted that Apongbon, an area historically less prone to flooding, now experiences severe inundation. He similarly linked emerging flooding patterns in Bariga and Sholuyi partly to construction activities and large-scale soil displacement.
This points to a deeper structural reality. For years, aggressive sandfilling projects marketed as flood control and urban expansion have steadily erased wetlands and floodplains to create space for luxury estates and commercial developments. Yet the science here is straightforward and uncontested: wetlands absorb stormwater; concrete does not. Every hectare of wetland reclaimed without corresponding drainage expansion permanently reduces the city’s natural absorptive capacity.
If Lagos is serious about reducing flood risk and improving urban sanitation, then responsibility must be addressed honestly and proportionately. Lagos State bears primary responsibility for ensuring adequate infrastructure, enforcing environmental regulations, and strengthening waste management systems. Wetland protection and setback laws cannot continue to apply strictly to roadside traders and low-income residents while politically connected developers openly violate them with little consequence. PSP operators deserve criticism where service obligations are abandoned, but government must equally account for the institutional failures and infrastructural bottlenecks that undermine those operators. Residents who dump refuse into drainage channels or erect structures illegally on setbacks are not blameless either.
The reforms required are neither mysterious nor impossible. LAWMA’s operational fleet must be expanded permanently rather than temporarily increased after every public outcry. Wetland and setback regulations must be enforced consistently, including against influential developers and politically protected interests. Olusosun’s access roads and waste-processing equipment should be fixed before authorities shift blame entirely onto PSP operators for delays created by the dumpsite itself. Most importantly, government must engage honestly with the consequences of unchecked land reclamation. Repeating the phrase “flash flooding” after every disaster increasingly sounds less like diagnosis and more like institutional deflection.
Lagos is a coastal city, and some degree of flooding will always remain inevitable. But the vast distance between unavoidable environmental vulnerability and the scale of this week’s disruption was created largely through policy choices, neglected maintenance, compromised urban planning, and unenforced land regulations.
Acknowledging the government’s investments does not require pretending the current system is adequate. Likewise, identifying structural inadequacies does not require denying that some efforts have been made. What Lagos needs now is not another cycle of excuses and emergency responses, but the political courage to confront the deeper governance failures turning heavy rainfall into recurring urban catastrophe.
