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Regional News of Sunday, 23 May 2021

Source: www.vanguardngr.com

Flood: Lekki estate where rain water mixes with sewage water

Flood in Lagos Flood in Lagos

Residents of Lekki Gardens Ajah Phase 2, Lagos are lamenting what they described as infrastructural degradation at the estate.

The residents took to the streets, last week, in protest against the developer’s alleged failure to fulfill the promise of making the estate habitable.

When Sunday Vanguard visited the estate, our correspondent was shown water seeping out of leaking sewage in parts of the estate. Sewage water was everywhere and you could hardly walk without stepping on dirty water.

Speaking on the ordeal faced since relocating to the estate, the General Secretary of the Residents Association of Lekki Gardens, Dr. Awolola Eniola, recounted how efforts to contain the challenges met with a brick-wall. “I have been in this estate for over five years, and it’s been one trouble after another. At some point, because of the sewage issue, we had to take the developer to the Lagos State Waste

Management Authority (LAWMA) and the agency gave them a timeline to do the right thing while advising them on the appropriate thing to do”, Eniola said.

“But to our surprise, most of the things that they were mandated to do, they haven’t done them. The agency even served them notice which expired 18 days ago. So we are at the risk of the agency coming to seal-up the entire estate because it’s considered not habitable.

“They said for people to reside here, the developer has to put key infrastructures in place. We bought these properties upfront so we are like the developer’s partners and we had an agreement based on the things he promised to deliver to us.

“If you look around you, an estate of over one thousand residents, is without a functioning sewage and clinic.

“In the past three months, some incidents that could have been averted occurred because we don’t have a clinic. How can somebody build these and give us just two transformers?

“We have to tax ourselves to get extra transformer to extend the 33KVA power line to go round”.

Eniola stressed the need for Lagos State government to come to their rescue as he claimed the developer had started erecting other structures on “already overstretched structures”.

The association General Secretary added, “If he cannot help us, he shouldn’t complicate our problem. The developer still comes in building more structures.

“Now tell me what infrastructure are those structures going to use? There is nobody in this estate that has not done reconstruction in one way or the other due to dilapidation in a short while.

“We have written countless letters to the  developer but he ignored us. Information has it that he said there’s nothing we can do to him as he’s connected to the powers-that-be in Lagos”.

Transformers

On his part, the Chairman of the Water Committee for the estate, Olawale Hassan, who was obviously upset at the state of the estate, said: “We lost four transformers within six months. We had to tax ourselves to buy another set.

“And the developer gave us a timeline on the transformers but he didn’t keep to it”.

Leakage

Another resident, Mr. Tony Igho, who is also the Road Coordinator for Roads 9b and 9c, said: “As you are aware that we are in the rainy season, in just 30 minutes’ rain, you can see the level of flood in the estate”.

“What we experience here is not ordinary rain, it is rain water mixed with sewage water. This is unacceptable. We have children going to school. “When they come back, they have to step into sewage water to get into their homes. Which health value are we giving to our children?

“If rain should fall in a day, you won’t be able to come into the estate unless you are wearing rain boots. This is not what we paid for. We paid for a place where we can walk around freely, devoid of flood.

“Road 9c is the epicentre of the leakage in the sewage system and the flood system in Lekki Gardens. “Electric power, as we speak, is not available and if they supply us electric power, it will destroy all our electrical appliances.

“Nobody is happy living like this. Each time it rains, I put on my boots knocking on every door to know if they have other problems.

“If you flush the toilet, the water comes back to you. It cannot go on like this.

“We have made several demands from the developer and there has been no response that is satisfactory to us.

“We expect a man at that level to come forward and discuss with the executives of the residents association.

“At night it is dark here. So you can imagine how dangerous it is here for our families. How do we respond to our children that this is what we have provided for them?”

Efforts made to reach the developer of the property, Mr Richard Nyong, via phone calls proved abortive as neither him nor officials of his company, Lekki Gardens Estate Limited, answered our phone calls.