By Ayo Oladiran
Living in the Petroleum Pipeline Limited (PPL) area of Ojo local government area is an experience Aishah Olayinka, a student of the Lagos State University (LASU), Ojo, would forever remember but not for anything good because the area has never really been associated with anything good.
Known among students and locals as a hub of criminal activities like pickpocketing and armed robbery, PPL houses hundreds of students like Aishah who can only afford the cheapest temporary shelter within the school’s environs. Little wonder it earned the moniker, ‘Poor People’s Land’.
When this student and her friend made the decision to rent a self-contained room and parlour on Jengbadun Street in 2022, neither of them realised at the time that as the neighborhood gave them savings in rent cost, it would also give them discomfort in no small measure.
Nature would not stall this realisation for too long though. On September 16, 2023, while Aishah was napping during the day, water crept through her apartment and toured through the place until every corner was wet. When she got out of bed, her feet felt the water first, and every nerve from her toes to the crown of her ankles had realised the same thing – flood.
“The water beat the windows and door and entered my toilet. From there, it traveled into my room because the toilet was in my room. Immediately I stood up and placed my leg on the floor, I put my leg into the water. Our neighbors had already packed their own stuff up but we were not aware that the area was usually flooded like that,” she narrated to our reporter.
The day was World Clean Up day, an annual global event which occurs every third Saturday of September with the aim of organisingpeople around the world to collect and dispose of refuse in public spaces, Aishah had made plans to join a community of persons who were willing to clean up communities but it was that day she finally discovered why many people warned against getting an apartment in PPL and the role that refuse played in the fear surrounding renting an apartment there.
For many other unsuspecting students and residents like Aishah, PPL does not really seem like a bad place to stay and the warnings seem irrelevant until the rainy season comes and they have to constantly rush home whenever it rains to ensure that their properties are not ruined.
The 34th Welfare Director of the Lagos State University Student Union (LASUSU) who had come to the student’s rescue when their apartment got flooded, Comrade Apata Oluwasegun, told our reporter that he has had to deal with similar issues on several occasions especially in PPL.
Now, while it has been established that the PPL area is prone to flooding, staying in PPL, is like staying on two different sides of a coin. Certain areas like Jagun and Ora streets never really have to bother whenever rain falls because they know that their houses are safe to a certain extent. However, there are certain areas like Femi Aluko, Jengbadun, Alowonle and Aiyepe, where one cannot sleep with their two eyes closed while it rains.
CHILDREN AND THE VULNERABLE ARE NOT SPARED
On October 21, 2022, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) released a warning that more than 2.5 million people in Nigeria are in need of humanitarian assistance – 60 per cent of which are children – and are at increased risk of waterborne diseases, drowning and malnutrition due to the most severe flooding in the past decade.
According to Cristian Munduate, UNICEF Representative in Nigeria, “Children and adolescents in flood-affected areas are in an extremely vulnerable situation”. He further revealed that they are particularly at risk of waterborne diseases and emotional and psychological distress.
Similarly, in a report published by the United States National Library of Medicine (NLM) aimed at examining the relationship between flood exposure and diarrhea risk among children younger than five years, the multi-country cross-sectional study of 639,250 children established that exposure to floods was found to be associated with a higher prevalence of diarrhea, driven by extreme flood events, floods that lasted more than two weeks, and floods preceded by droughts.
“These findings suggest that floods, especially severe floods, long-duration floods, and floods preceded by drought, are associated with an increased risk of diarrhea among children younger than 5 years living in low- and middle-income countries. With the projected increasing frequency and intensity of floods and drought under climate change, greater collective efforts are needed to protect children’s health from these compounding event,” the report stated.
CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF WATER LOGGING
Again, Comrade Apata Oluwasegun noted to our reporter that the most visible cause for this flooding is the lack of drainages in the area. “Some parts of PPL have good drainages but some places like Femi Aluko do not have a good drainages as they have only small gutters. So, the water flowing from the areas with good drainages would have the water move away from there and rather than the water moving into a big canal, the water goes to the areas with bad drainages and weakens the buildings,” Apata said.
Furthermore, he stated that another reason flooding happens in PPL is due to the fact most of the houses in the area are old houses with inappropriate foundation that are down to gutter level and since there is no good tarred road, the moment rain falls the water would flow into the houses and you would see people bailing water out their houses.
In addition, Mr. Sefinrinmi Toviho, a geographer and lecturer at the Department of Geography and Planning at the Lagos State University noted to our reporter that urbanization being on the rise with the influx of people and the increased buildup of environment is one of the causes of flooding in PPL. 
Also, he stated that drainage channels are mostly built on, impeded and sometimes refuse is being dumped into those drainage services, and at other times they are not properly evacuated causing flooding and water logging.
As a result of this, Mr Toviho noted that there is likely to be a depreciation in the value of the houses in the areas. “For instance, in such neighborhood there is some would-be rental of houses and demand would be low in such neighborhood because some people would prefer other neighborhoods to that neighborhood because of that flooding incident;” he said. Further adding that there would be moistening of the property, a water logging effect whereby a property would have wet walls, all year round.
Speaking on the impact of flooding on roads in PPL, the Geography expert stated that the constant flooding would reduce the life span of the road over time due to water logging and lack of proper drainage. Proposing effective waste management strategies.
“It is expected that in a neighborhood that has an ever-increasing population, there would be lots of waste being generated, and the generation of that waste if they are not properly disposed would find its way into drainages which fills up the drainages leading to blockage of the draining of water,” Mr. Toviho said. Suggesting that before the onset of every rainy season, the drainage channels should be properly maintained and siltation has to be reduced by taking out the sand in those areas which can be manually or mechanically removed.
Conclusively, he explained that due to the changing land use pattern and over-urbanization, people have begun to out rightly build on drainage channels. Such houses have to give way like the Lagos state government is doing in Lekki and Festac and so many other parts of Lagos. This is to allow the free flow of water to curb the incessant flooding during the rainy season.
WHAT IS THE GOVERNMENT DOING?
Engineer Olanrewaju Jelili, the resident engineer of the Office of Drainage Services at the Lagos State Ministry of Environment told our reporter that the state government is doing its best to ensure that the flooding in the area is reduced citing examples of some ongoing drainage projects in the PPL area like the PPL junction and the one at Ashiawu Apeke Street being carried out by the Iba Local Council Development Area (LCDA).
However, he noted to our reporter that one of the reasons the project is being delayed is due to the ongoing construction of the Lagos-Badagry expressway which is supposed to contain a Cross Covert drainage that will collect water from the PPL area to the Alaba Rago area in Ojo.
The engineer explained that the water from PPL is expected to cross to Alaba Rago. The plan for the area is that a collector drain will take water from PPL and a cross covert that crosses to the Lagos-Badagry express will take it to Alaba Rago which has a primary channel that then takes it to Alaba International, however, the ongoing road construction is currently stalling the construction.
Furthermore, he noted that the PPL area also collects water from certain areas and since the water is unable to leave PPL, the flooding would still occur until the drainage channels are completed. “The water from Ago Anogo and Igbo Igunu, the water from those places goes straight to PPL and then crosses to Alaba through the Cross Covert along the Badagry express road but the ongoing project at the Badagry express road makes the flooding continue but once the Lagos- Badagry express road is done, the Cross Covert will be done and the flooding will reduce,” Engineer Jelili stated.
On the other hand, he faulted the residents of such areas for not taking care of the drainage systems they have “Nigerians wait for the government to do things. Since the removal of the compulsory Saturday sanitation people have developed a lackadaisical attitude to little things in their area. If something as small as a tire blocks their drainage, they will wait for the government to come and do it for them saying that they are paying tax, that the government should do everything,” he told our reporter.
In addition, he noted that residents of the area are fond of throwing their waste into the water when it rains and some non-biodegradable materials in the waste, like plastic and nylon, go on to block drainage systems.
On the other hand, the Ministry of the environment is doing its best, Engineer Jelili noted to our reporter, however he explained that some projects have to be prioritized above others especially in flood prone areas like Ojo.
In his words, “When we go out to check areas, a compendium is created for all possible projects and complaints and when we are asked to bring a list of possible projects they are submitted as projects for the area but the money allocated might not really cover it, so a scale of preference is done and the emergency ones are chosen. This cycle continues because by the time we are done with the ones in the compendium in about three years, new projects would have come up again.”
He, however, urged that locals should make complaints to the Ministry of Environment through the Office of drainage services as this would help the ministry to prioritize such projects while planning.
All efforts to reach out to a community leader in PPL were in vain because the LCDA chairman and the Oniba of Iba are the closest leadership structure for the people of PPL and the absence of such bodies like the Community Development Association (CDA) has led to the absence of basic regulations and locals have disregarded their obligations especially in terms of taking care of the environment.
Alfa Musa Abdulrauf, an Islamic cleric in the area confirmed the lack of unilateral leadership structure in a report by The Nation Newspapers saying, the PPL area had “no CDA chairman. No king. But they have peer groups and everyone has their leaders. On having a unilateral leader, I have not come across it.”
Also, for many years, the Ojo local government has been in the news for warnings of flood and flooding during the rainy season. In August 2023, the Lagos State Government through the Permanent Secretary, Office of Drainage Services and Water Resources, Engineer Lekan Shodeinde, issued a fresh flood alert to residents of some parts of the state including Apapa, Badagry, Eti Osa, Ikeja, Ikorodu, Ikoyi, Lagos Island and Ojo.
Not long after, in September 2023, Daily Trust reported that the flood had submerged several properties in Lagos and Ojo was listed as one of the worst-hit areas.
Again, on 21st January 2024, the Lagos state government announced a ban on the distribution and use of polystyrene (Styrofoam) and other single-use plastic in a bid to reduce the impact of these plastics on the environment. According to a Punch editorial, Lagos grapples with poor hygiene behaviors and indiscriminate waste disposal habits by residents. Reports state that Lagos generates 870,000 tonnes of plastic and loses N7 billion annually managing waste. Here, used plastics are bad optics: on roads, gutters, and estates, they create an eyesore. Drainage networks are often clogged due to the reckless disposal of non-biodegradable items; roads and markets are littered despite the best efforts of the Lagos State Waste Management Authority. Although the ban was not properly planned at the moment, leading to an extension, if it is implemented, the ban would be a step in the right direction to reduce flooding, especially in areas like PPL.
This report was facilitated by the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ) under its Collaborative Media Engagement for Development, Inclusivity and Accountability (CMEDIA) project.
