By Akinwale Kasali
The Lagos State Government has read the riot act to squatters under the Ijora Causeway Bridge and Lagos Blue Rail Line overhead bridge in Ijora to remove all their shanties for constituting a danger to the Lagos Blue Line corridor or risk demolition.
The Government gave them a-five day notice to vacate the shanties with immediate effect.
Tokunbo Wahab, Commissioner for the Environment and Water Resources, on behalf of the State Government issued the quit notice when he led a delegation that included the Chairman, the Special Intervention Squad on the Restoration of the Lagos Badagry Rail Corridor Clean-Up, Assistant Commissioner of Police, ACP, Bayo Sulaiman, and Special Adviser on the Environment, Kunle Rotimi-Akodu on an inspection of the Ijora and the under bridge.
Wahab lamented the security risk that the occupation of the underneath the Blue Rail Line bridge by mini buses, block moulders, fuel sellers, and miscreants posed to the safe operation of the Blue Rail Line service, said the government would not allow the menace to continue.
The Commissioner stated that the State Task Force on Special Offences would take full possession of the whole expanse of land under the Ijora Causeway Bridge and would be sustained by the state government.
Wahab also gave a 24-hour quit notice to all those selling petroleum products under the Ijora Bridge to move all their trucks and containers or risk confiscation, adding that they posed enormous dangers to the infrastructure and human presence in the area.
He reiterated that no form of enforcement must be carried against distributors and sellers of styrofoam products until the expiration of the three-week moratorium granted them.
Wahab maintained that the three-week window would allow all producers and distributors to mop up all the stock they have before the enforcement of the ban takes effect.
The Environment team was also at the Park View Estate in Ikoyi where a secondary collector has been infringed upon from the upstream by building across and fencing it off.
He directed the Drainage Enforcement and Compliance Department to serve proper notices to all the property owners asking them to give unfettered access to the state to monitor its secondary collectors and remove any impediments if any.
Wahab said monitoring and enforcement of the laws on the environment will be an everyday affair and this explains why the ministry has picked up from where it stopped last year.
