A plea for Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu to protect his Lagos legacy by urgently addressing waste collection, potholes, damaged roads and construction debris.
The Home Stretch
There is an old wisdom that the horse does not stumble on the home stretch when returning to the stable after a long journey. Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu is now on that home stretch after eight years in the saddle. He has travelled a considerable political distance, presided over major infrastructure and transportation projects and survived enough political weather to know that the road to history is never smooth. Yet as he approaches the stable, Lagos appears to be presenting him with an uncomfortable final examination: garbage on the streets, craters on the roads and environmental decay in too many places.
Governor Sanwo-Olu, please do not allow these to become the photographs through which history remembers your administration. This is not an argument that the Governor has done nothing. Far from it. His administration has its achievements, and he deserves his flowers for the things he has done well. But there is an inconvenient truth about political legacies: achievements do not always get to choose the photographs that history preserves. Sometimes the pothole chooses the photograph. Sometimes the heap of garbage does. Sometimes the broken road encountered every morning by a motorist speaks louder than a commissioned project thousands of kilometres away.
A Legacy at Risk
That is why the roads and the garbage now appear to be conspiring to deprive Governor Sanwo-Olu of his flowers. His journey to Alausa is itself part of Lagos political history. He emerged from the political establishment associated with his predecessor, then Governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and rose through important public positions before becoming Governor. His emergence followed the extraordinary political circumstances that terminated Governor Akinwunmi Ambode’s bid for a second term. Ambode’s administration had demonstrated considerable infrastructural ambition, but politics, as we know, does not always permit merit to dictate succession. Sanwo-Olu emerged, won the election, served four years and won another. He therefore received the rare Nigerian privilege of eight years to write his name into Lagos history.
His journey has not been without difficult moments. The #EndSARS crisis was a national trauma that tested government and public trust. There were also political controversies and allegations surrounding the much-discussed Achimugu affair, including claims concerning a personal relationship and financial involvement, which gave some political interests the opportunity to contemplate “Amboding” the Governor’s second term. But allegations are not convictions, and political insinuation is not evidence. Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat — the burden of proof rests upon the person who asserts, not the person who denies. Sanwo-Olu survived that storm and secured his second term.
And here we are.
The Problem in Plain Sight
My concern now is not some hidden scandal waiting in a cupboard. It is lying openly across the streets of Lagos: garbage, potholes, broken roads, construction debris and environmental decay. The rains have arrived and have become rather unforgiving auditors of Lagos. They have stripped away the cosmetics and exposed the condition of the metropolis. There seems hardly to be a stretch of road without some crater masquerading as a pothole. Motorists now drive with the additional burden of wondering which crater will claim a tyre, damage a suspension or produce another unexpected repair bill. Motoring in Lagos increasingly resembles an examination in advanced evasive manoeuvring.
The problem is not confined to major roads. Many inner streets are deplorable, and Lagos Island, which ought to be one of the showpieces of the metropolis, is particularly troubling. Even where a road remains passable, some developers and contractors appear to have discovered that public roads make excellent extensions of private construction sites. Sand, blocks, building materials and construction debris regularly occupy portions of the carriageway. A road designed for two-way traffic suddenly becomes a negotiation between motorists, pedestrians, construction materials and the occasional truck.
Then there is the garbage.
When the Waste System Faltered
Lagos has known garbage before — mountains of it, sometimes large enough to qualify for a Certificate of Occupancy. But successive administrations, particularly from the Tinubu years through Babatunde Fashola and thereafter, gradually built a waste-management system that made the problem manageable. LAWMA became an institutional instrument of municipal government. It was not perfect, but it worked sufficiently to prevent Lagos from drowning in its own waste.
Governor Ambode experimented with another methodology. He did not have the opportunity to complete it before political circumstances ended his tenure, and Governor Sanwo-Olu subsequently returned to the LAWMA trajectory. For a while, the situation remained imperfect but manageable. Then the system began to falter. Changes surrounding major disposal arrangements, including the Olusosun axis, were followed by increasingly irregular collection.
The garbage, naturally, did not receive the memo announcing the change. Lagosians continued to eat, markets continued to operate, restaurants continued to cook and households continued to produce waste. Only the collection system appeared to acquire a new philosophy: why collect garbage every day when once in a while will do?
The result is visible, offensive and potentially dangerous. Garbage accumulates beside roads and in neighbourhoods; drainage becomes obstructed; vermin multiply; the environment deteriorates. The city increasingly gives the impression that the government has entered into a disagreement with the garbage and, regrettably, the garbage is winning.
More Than an Aesthetic Issue
This is no longer merely an aesthetic issue. It is an environmental and public-health concern. Salus populi suprema lex — the welfare of the people is the supreme law. Government does not exist merely to build things that can be commissioned with bands, cameras and speeches. It exists to protect the welfare of the people. What is the point of rail infrastructure if citizens must navigate garbage and broken roads to reach the stations? What is the point of roads if the roads themselves have become daily tests of tyres and suspension systems? Why build the skeleton of a modern metropolis and then allow its streets and environment to decay?
Yet this is precisely why I am reluctant to turn this into a catalogue of failures. Governor Sanwo-Olu has done enough to deserve recognition. The problem is that the things he has done well may be in danger of being overshadowed by things that should be within the ordinary competence of government to fix.
That is the tragedy.
The Photograph History Preserves
A governor may build rail lines, improve transportation, undertake major infrastructure and pursue an ambitious development agenda, only for a photograph of a mountain of garbage or a car stranded in a pothole to become the image that circulates. It is unfair perhaps, but politics and history are not always fair. They are often visual. They remember what people see and what they experience.
Lagos has a mischievous memory. It remembers governors through shorthand. Buba Marwa is remembered for confronting the era of brazen armed robbery, his road rehabilitation and civic discipline. Babatunde Fashola is remembered for civic order, BRT, urban renewal and Oshodi. Akinwunmi Ambode is remembered for the extraordinary infrastructural energy of his single term. Somewhere in that museum of Lagos memory sits the military governor immortalised as “No Bitumen.” Lagosians have always been capable of reducing an administration to a nickname or a defining image.
So what will Sanwo-Olu’s two terms become? Will Lagos remember the rail, roads, waterways, hospitals and other interventions? Or will some future Lagosian ask who Sanwo-Olu was and receive the devastating answer: “Sanwo-Olu? Na that governor wey leave Lagos full of garbage and potholes.” That would be a terrible epitaph — and, worse, an avoidable one.
There Is Still Time
This is why the Governor should act now, with intentionality and sincerity of purpose. Not because eight years of service deserve to be ridiculed, but precisely because eight years of service deserve to be protected from an avoidable final impression.
There is still time.
If the waste system is broken, fix it. If contractors are failing, replace them. If equipment is inadequate, deploy more. If disposal infrastructure is overwhelmed, create alternatives. If developers obstruct public roads with building materials and debris, enforce the law. If roads have failed, repair them. If bureaucracy is the problem, dismantle it. If money is the problem, find it.
And if anyone says there is no money, the Governor should ask the more uncomfortable question: how much will environmental neglect cost Lagos if it becomes a public-health crisis, and how much are Lagosians already losing to damaged tyres, suspensions, traffic and avoidable vehicle repairs?
Waste collection is not charity. Road maintenance is not luxury. Keeping public roads free of private construction debris is not harassment of developers. These are basic functions of governance.
A Plea, Not a Prosecution
I know Governor Sanwo-Olu and I share a common matrimony where it mattered, and therefore I have no desire to watch his political legacy unnecessarily vandalised at the final hour. I would rather see him finish strongly and receive the flowers he deserves than allow potholes and garbage to become the undertakers of his legacy.
That is why this is a plea, not a prosecution.
The final chapter has not been written. The Governor can still determine what the final photograph looks like. Acta non verba — deeds, not words. History will not ultimately care how many sanitation meetings were held or how many press releases announced that waste collection was being “repositioned.” Nor will it care how many kilometres of roads were commissioned if those roads are subsequently allowed to disintegrate. History will ask one simple question: What condition did you leave Lagos in?
Governor Sanwo-Olu is on the home stretch. He does not need another slogan. He needs to ensure that the city he hands over is clean, navigable and worthy of the extraordinary place Lagos occupies in Nigeria’s economic and political life. The final measure of a Governor is not simply what he builds but the condition in which he leaves his people. The glory of a king is the welfare of his subjects. The glory of a Governor is the condition in which he leaves his people.
Let Lagosians decide what eight years of Sanwo-Olu deserve in the ledger of history. My plea is simply that they should not be forced to make that judgment while sitting beside a mountain of garbage or replacing a tyre destroyed by a pothole. Please do not allow garbage and potholes to rewrite the story. Do not let politics explain what administration can fix. Do not let bureaucracy defend what common sense condemns. Lagos has survived mountains of garbage and terrible roads before. It does not need another Governor to leave it both.
Clear Lagos. Repair Lagos. Clean Lagos. Finish well.
For in the final reckoning, the most unforgiving court is not the High Court, the Court of Appeal or even the Supreme Court. It is history. And unlike the courts, history does not require a certified true copy before admitting the evidence. Sometimes, all it needs is a photograph. Sometimes, all it needs is a smell. Sometimes, all it needs is a damaged tyre. And sometimes, unfortunately, the garbage, the potholes and the decay speak for themselves.
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About the author: Otunba Abiodun Olufowobi writes as Pabiekun, publishing essays on Nigerian politics, culture, governance, history, law and public memory. This essay first appeared on pabiekun.com on 10 August 2026 and is republished by Lagos Metropolitan with the author’s permission. Views expressed are the author’s.
