The International Facility Management Association (IFMA), Nigerian Chapter, has urged Lagos residents to embrace technology deployed by the state government to address the waste disposal crisis in the state.
Its President, Mr Sherif Daramola, made the call in an interview with reporters on Monday in Lagos.
Daramola was referring to the Citi Monitor application developed by the Lagos State Government to report environmental challenges requiring government attention.
The state government inaugurated the localised Citi Monitor application in 2021 alongside the Enterprise Environmental Monitoring Infrastructure Information System.
The government designed the application to enable residents to report and monitor environmental infractions, including illegal waste dumping, blocked canals, flooding, damaged roads and illegal structures.
The application also has features for capturing real-time images with automatic timestamps, addresses, local governments and markets, with reporting locations restricted to Lagos State.
Daramola said: “The platform can help residents communicate problems in their communities directly to the relevant authorities and facilitate faster responses to environmental issues.”
He, however, expressed concern over the under-utilisation of the application by residents despite its potential to improve environmental management.
“The Lagos State Government has graciously launched the Citi Monitor for public use, but the question is, how many of the citizens have the app on their phones?
“The Citi Monitor is very effective and one of the few tools that can turn our localities into smart environments, but people hardly use it; instead, they complain about everything,” he said.
“The application provides a channel for residents to report challenges in their communities, while enabling relevant authorities to receive the information and take appropriate action,” he added.
Daramola therefore urged residents to move beyond complaining about environmental problems and actively use available technology to draw the government’s attention to issues requiring intervention.
He also expressed confidence in the responsiveness of the state government to citizens’ complaints, noting that greater use of the platform would strengthen interaction between residents and government agencies.
The IFMA boss said proper waste sorting could also transform waste generated in Lagos into a source of wealth, rather than allowing it to become an environmental burden.
“We need to know how we sort out waste. Most of that can be turned to wealth and that is what the Lagos Waste Management Authority is also doing,” he said.
Daramola said indiscriminate dumping of refuse on major highways and other available spaces remained a major challenge to effective waste management in the state.
He described the situation as partly a cultural problem, stressing that residents must take responsibility for keeping their communities clean instead of relying solely on government to evacuate waste.
“The first thing I will say about the issue is the incessant dumping of refuse on the major highways in Lagos, which has to stop.
“It is a bad culture to line up the major highways with filth, expecting government to come and pick it.
“That is why I said it was not an evacuation crisis but a cultural one,” he said.
Daramola urged residents to adopt responsible waste disposal practices and ensure that waste is properly sorted and classified before disposal.
He called for more creativity and innovation in waste management, noting that wealth-generating waste is increasingly becoming an important part of sustainable environmental management.
He said exposure to innovations in other parts of the world, through international conferences, could help Nigerian stakeholders identify solutions that could be adapted to local conditions.
Daramola stressed that the involvement of facility managers was critical to the effective management of infrastructure, particularly as cities continue to expand and demand for efficient infrastructure management increases.
“The involvement of facility management is important because come 2030, the economy in facility management will be in US billion dollars,” he said.
He explained that facility management covers the effective management of infrastructure throughout its life cycle, including maintaining its value and ensuring that it continues to generate business value.
He said the sector would therefore remain critical to determining how infrastructure is maintained, how long it remains productive and how much economic value it generates.
Daramola urged Lagos residents, government agencies and other stakeholders to combine responsible waste disposal practices with available technology to create cleaner and smarter communities.
