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    Tuesday, August 6, 2013

    LAGOS WILL SOON GENERATE ELECTRICITY FROM WASTE - LAWMA Boss, Oladimeji Oresanya


    Electricity is one problem the nation has been battling with from all fronts and it seems there is no way out. But, a good news coming from the Managing Director of the Lagos State Waste Management Agency (LAWMA), Mr. Ola Oresanya, whose profile keeps rising by the day, is that Lagos will soon start generating electricity from its wastes products.
    The trained geologist and toxicologist has been in the profession for the past 28 years and all his experiences over the years and academic training have paid off as he has been able to put them into use to take LAWMA to an enviable height. The agency’s waste-to-wealth programme is one area Oresanya is passionate about and the efforts appear to be yielding results as he said Lagos will soon launch its waste-powered electricity in the next few months.
    In this interview with the Oladipupo Awojobi, Mr. Oresanya opened up on what he has been doing in the agency, and declared that LAWMA has been working round the clock to keep Lagos clean.

    What have been the secrets of the successes of LAWMA and what have you done to turn the fortune of the agency around and as a multiple-award winning personality, what have been your driving forces?
    Let me start with the institution, LAWMA is an institution of the Lagos State Government and we have men and women working there and this group of people, including me, have a shared vision. We have a common agenda; we are a group of people that are resolute to make a change in the society, especially in our sector, the sanitation sector. The driving force behind what you called the success right now, because success is never ending, it is a continuum, has been the shared vision amongst the staff, the commitment and zeal to achieve result and the support of the state Governor, Babatunde Raji Fashola, who believe so much in us and there is a political will behind our plans and aspirations. That political will has been the pillar upon which LAWMA rests. When you have that political will from the Chief Executive, you have nothing else than to continue to build on that and achieve various results.

    What would you say have been the challenges of clearing the city of Lagos of waste?
    The challenges are hydra-headed in nature from various things, initially it was implements, infrastructure and getting the skilled personnel to do the job, but on the side of the public, the challenges have been the co-operation and having the buying of the members of the public knowing fully well that this is a society, where people are cynical about government projects, we didn’t have the buying of the people, so it was very tough. Apart from that, in this part of the world, where we have seasonal differences, during the rainy season it is a Herculean task to manage waste, it is not a joke. Those have been the various challenges we have.


    Let’s talk about the Private Sector Participation (PSP), there have been some complaints about their activities, though some of them have been commended. What machinery do you put in place to ensure the PSPs do what you want them to do?
    In any utility service all over the world, there will always be complaints, there is no way you can get 100% right. For people to complain about PSP, one good news is that at least they recognize that there is a body that has been put in place to provide services, but whether the service is good or not good, that is why you have LAWMA, the regulator to ensure that we listen to that complaints, whether genuine of flimsy, we must make sure we satisfy our customers. We have our customer care line, which people can call. Our bills get to every household in Lagos and on that bill you have various lines, where you can reach out to us, where they can call all the time, we have toll free lines; 5577 and 07080, 601020, those are toll free lines, where people can call for their complaints or for their advice. People can call to give us advice or information, people also educate us on some of the things we believe we know, but which we may really not know. We cannot know it all; we have lines of communication with members of the public and regular interaction with them. It is a 24/7 platform, and apart from those lines, we have various network, we have an interactive website, we have close to 2 million visitors to the website, we are on facebook, we are on twitter and we have various platforms, where people can reach us. We don’t even wait for people to reach us alone, we also have survey that we do, we go out there to conduct field survey and listen to what people have to say about the ratings of the PSPs, we encourage phone-in in our programmes in about 13 radio stations every week to make sure that we reach out to our clients and ensure their satisfaction.

    What of your waste-to-wealth programme?
    Waste-to-wealth is an acronym for recycling and resource recovery generally and that means giving new definition to waste on its own, looking at waste as a resource for secondary industry because we believe that waste is not waste, you don’t really have to waste it. What you call waste at a point in time is a raw material for another person at a time. What you call waste at Point A is a resource for another person at Point B. So, LAWMA as an institution is warehousing this shift in time and place for the material that is discarded at Point A and make it available for the user at Point B and the stream of those users varies from compost production, which we are the biggest in Africa right now, we are the biggest producers of fertilizer from waste in Africa and we ensure that those who are discarding this wastes from market deliver at the compost site at Ikorodu. We also deliver pet bottles for those, who are converting them into pillows, jerseys, fibers for furniture making. We ensure also that pure water sachet, which used to be a headache, we have created opportunities for even the uninformed ones as long as you have muscles and legs, go and pick those things, we buy them and deliver to our plants, where they convert the pure water sachet to other products. We also ensure that the tyres, which used to litter the roads in those days and used for bonfire are collected and delivered to those who are ready to convert them into race tracks, shoes soles and others, paper wastes from Oke-Arin in Lagos are collected and delivered to paper producing company in Jebba, and other paper mills, where they are converted into new papers. So, we look at waste to wealth generally, these are the streams of things that are already happening. We also make sure that even the waste from Ikosi Market in Ketu is converted into electricity so that even the market now benefit from its own waste. These are the various things that we do in managing that waste from Point A to Point B.

    Do you have the technology to convert the waste to wealth?
    Well, most of the things we are doing are not rocket science; most of them are from indigenous technology. For example, we convert the fruit waste into electricity, they are all indigenous, they are not rocket sciences, we make sure that most of the conversions we do, we indigenize the technology as much as possible to avoid running ourselves aground by bringing foreign technology that will get us stuck at the end of the day. But, the ones we don’t manufacture, we partner with foreign companies to bring them.

    Talking figures now, what is the capacity of the waste you generate daily, monthly or quarterly?
    Well, we have about 10,000 cubic meters of wastes are generated on a daily basis in Lagos.

    The last time, you said Olusosun dumpsite was meant to last for 30 years, and so far 20 years have gone down the line, so after the remaining 10 years, what will happen to the site?
    Olusosun will be developed into a green park, we are not even waiting for it to be 30 years before we do this. We have started development on half of the site, you would have seen where we have started putting laterite and we are going to plant grasses and make sure they are well managed and we do a bit of ecotourism, where we are going to have restaurant at the top of the hill that we created there, where people can come and eat. Then, side by side, we are going to have something called urban agriculture, where families can lease half a plot of land, or one plot of land to plant their cassava, vegetables and they can come over on weekends with their family members to till the soil and get fresh vegetables and pepper just talking about urban agric co-existing with eco-tourism at Olusosun. So, the place is developing into a green park over time and by the time we finish the phase one, by the time we are moving out in 10 years time, phase 2 will be ready to complement what we would have achieved.

    You also talk about using the waste to generate electricity in the state, how visible is this?
    By next year, come and see how it will be feasible, we are working on it and we are almost half way through into the work of drilling the pipeline and extracting methane and very soon, we are going to put electricity on that site.

    Apart form the PSPs, do you have collaborations with other private sectors in clearing waste in Lagos city?
    80 to 85% of our functions are done with the private sector, we have a very robust Public Private Partnership Programme in LAWMA. Most of the things we do, we do with the private sector even the recycling.

    What would you love to be remembered for, when you eventually leave LAWMA?
     I believe that a lot of people would remember a young man that came to take waste management to the highest level in Africa leading to Lagos being declared the cleanest city in Africa.

    I was going to ask if you joined LAWMA as the Managing Director or you rose through the ranks
    This is my 28 years as a waste manager, I spent 28 years managing waste in Lagos State and I became the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) after 20 years, so I have spent eight years on this seat.
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