Poisonous smoke takes over Ketu, Ojota, Oregun

Residents of Ketu, Ojota and Oregun areas of Lagos have appealed to the Lagos State government to come to their aid over the lethal smoke, believed to be coming from the Olukosi dumpsite, which had taken over the area in the past few days.

Some of the residents who spoke with Metro in Lagos, on Tuesday, complained that the smoke which was as a result of the burning of refuse at the Olusosun Dumpsite, located in the area, had started taking its toll on both occupants of offices and residential buildings  in the area.

For instance, while most of the offices in the area had continued to shut their doors and windows, relying on some cooling machines to survive inside, most residents in the area told Metro that they had to make do with inhaling the pollution, since they couldn’t afford the luxury of buying a cooling system that would help mitigate the effects of this environmental pollution on them.

While calling on the state government to come to the aid of people living in the area, Mr Sylvester Akpom, who works in one of the offices at Motorways Centre, located very close to the dumpsite, counseled the state government on the need to have better ways of disintegrating the refuse on the site.

“We’ve been living with this for the past few days; since last week to be precise. The smoke is all over the place and it is poisonous.”

“We can hardly work here since last week, we can hardly breathe. Unfortunately, nobody seems to be doing anything about this,” Sylvester lamented.

Another occupant of an office, Segun, located very close to the old gate area, explained that some of the staff in his office had resorted to spending shorter time in the office as a result of the pollution.

Efforts to reach the state government for its reaction on the development however proved abortive.

A call put through, to the Commissioner for Environment, Mr Babatunde Adejare, was not picked.

Subsequent text message sent to the commissioner, seeking to know what the Ministry was doing to address this situation was not responded to as at the time of filing this report.

Meanwhile, the smoke had continued to thicken, as at 4pm, when the correspondent went round the area, on Tuesday, with occupants of some offices in the area, seem in a hurry to close for the day, even before the official closing hours to avoid inhaling the poisonous smoke further.