Lagos does not forgive complacency. Its floods do not negotiate, its aquifers do not replenish themselves, and its waste, left unattended, grows into black mountains that burn for weeks.
For most of the past three decades, the Lagos State Ministry of Environment and Water Resources responded to these realities with the tools and tempo it inherited: slow, under-funded, and too often deferential to powerful interests. Then came 2025, and with it a commissioner, Tokunbo Phillip Wahab, who treated the portfolio like an emergency that had already lasted thirty years. The result was the most consequential single year any Lagos environment ministry has ever recorded. This is an unsparing account of what was achieved, agency by agency, what remains stubbornly unfinished, and what it cost, in political capital, in bruised relationships, and in sheer human exertion, to move a megacity even a few metres closer to liveability.
The Man Who Refused to Manage the Crisis
Tokunbo Wahab is a lawyer who speaks like a prosecutor and inspects sites like a detective who already knows where the body is buried. By the end of 2025 he had personally led several field operations, he is on X at odd hours, answering queries about why a pump station promised in March was still a hole in the ground in October, or why a drainage channel cleared in July was already blocked again in September.
Ministry staff learned quickly that “I will get back to you” was no longer an acceptable answer. Decisions that once crawled through ten committees were taken in site offices on short notices. You can call it “governance by adrenaline.” It has continued to produce results, but it also produced friction that will echo into 2026 and beyond.
Lagos Water Corporation (LWC): The First Real Progress in a Generation
Water is the most intimate of Lagos’s daily humiliations. Successive governments have announced grand master plans, only to deliver a few additional million gallons while demand raced ahead by tens of millions. In 2025 the Lagos Water Corporation finally broke that cycle.
The flagship project was Adiyan Phase II. On 24 October the final length of 1,200 mm ductile iron pipe – pipe number 944 was lowered into place along the 8 km transmission corridor from the new intake on the Ogun River to the treatment plant at Adiyan. When fully commissioned in the first quarter of 2026 the plant will add 70 million gallons per day (MGD) of treated water, raising total state production from roughly 210 MGD at the start of the year to approximately 280 MGD. It is the first major waterworks in Lagos to be completed within the original timeline in fifteen years.
But 2025 was about more than one plant. In April the state signed a $180 million financing package with the Belstar Capital–ENKA consortium, insured by the U.S. Development Finance Corporation, to rehabilitate the decaying Iju (45 MGD) and Ishashi (4 MGD) plants and to construct two new 35 MGD green-field mini-works at Akute and Otta-Iyana. Work began immediately. By December the Iju rehabilitation was 68% complete, and the first new mini-plant had reached foundation level.
Older, forgotten assets were resurrected. The Mosan-Okunola Waterworks in Alimosho, abandoned since 1999, was recommissioned in May after a nine-month overhaul. It now supplies 2.5 MGD to a local government that had never known public piped water. Across the state LWC replaced 127 km of tertiary distribution pipes and established 42 district meter areas. In the pilot zones non-revenue water fell from 64 % to 41 % still scandalously high by global standards, but a measurable improvement.
By November 2025, total production stood at 252 MGD, the highest figure Lagos has ever recorded in a single year. It is still less than a third of the estimated demand, and millions continue to buy expensive, sometimes contaminated water from tankers and sachets. Yet for the first time since 1999, the gap narrowed rather than widened.
Office of Drainage Services & Emergency Flood Abatement Gangs: Turning the Tide, Literally
Lagos floods for two reasons: it rains hard, and people have spent decades blocking the paths the water once took. In 2025 the Office of Drainage Services (ODS) and its rapid-response unit, the Emergency Flood Abatement Gangs (EFAG), attacked both problems simultaneously.
Between January and October the gangs cleaned 666 linear kilometres of tertiary and secondary drains, more than in the previous four years combined. They removed 412,000 cubic metres of solid waste and silt. Forty-two new high-capacity pumps were installed in systemic flood spots: Idimu, Iyana-Ipaja, Ajegunle phases I and II, Okota, and parts of Lekki Phase I.
In September, the State took the unprecedented step of suspending all ongoing reclamation and sand-filling activities across the state. Forty-seven sites were sealed, eleven were partially demolished, and the message was unambiguous: wetlands and flood plains are no longer negotiable real estate.
The results showed during the October rains. Areas that routinely went underwater for days, Osborne Foreshore Phase II, parts of Ikate-Elegushi, System 1E drainage basin on the Lekki-Epe axis, experienced flooding measured in hours rather than days. It was not perfect; Agiliti, Ketu, and parts of Ikorodu still suffered badly, but the reduction in duration and extent was the clearest evidence yet that preventive cleaning and reclamation control actually work.
Lagos Waste Management Authority (LAWMA): From Crisis Management to Circular Ambition
For years, LAWMA’s public image oscillated between heroic and helpless. In 2025, it was allowed, for the first time, to behave like a modern solid-waste utility.
The fleet renewal was massive: 1,050 new compactor trucks, most running on compressed natural gas, replaced vehicles that should have been scrapped a decade earlier.
Domestic collection coverage in residential areas rose from 61 % to 78 %. Forty thousand jobs, sweepers, loaders, sorters, were formalised through audited Private Sector Participants (PSPs). The Styrofoam and single-use plastics ban finally acquired enforcement muscle: 123 metric tonnes of banned items were confiscated, 1,800 traders fined, and 41 supermarkets sealed until they complied.
But the real leap forward came at the 11th Lagos International Climate Change Summit in November, where LAWMA and the ministry signed four transformative MoUs:
HAK Waste Nigeria Ltd – State-wide deposit-refund system for PET bottles and cans, targeting 60 % recovery by 2028, modelled on successful schemes in Rwanda and South Africa.
Haggai Logistics Ltd – Construction of a 100-tonne-per-day tyre recycling plant in Epe that will produce crumb rubber and pyrolysis oil.
Mondo 4 Africa – A plastic-to-diesel pyrolysis facility in Ikorodu capable of processing 50 tonnes daily, with fuel off-take agreements already signed with two transport unions.
Harvest Waste Consortium (Dutch/Nigerian) – Definitive agreement for a 60–80 MW waste-to-energy plant at the Epe landfill, with financial close expected in March 2026 and construction starting immediately thereafter.
These are not letters of intent; they are binding contracts with performance bonds. For the first time, Lagos has a realistic pathway to close its three ageing landfills: Olusosun, Solous 2 & 3 within the next decade.
Lagos State Environmental Protection Agency (LASEPA): From Noise Nuisance to Full-Spectrum Regulator
LASEPA used to be known primarily for midnight raids on loud churches. It has since grown up.
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