Lagos Assembly passes environment bill into law

By Lanre Adesanya

Lagos State House of Assembly has passed a bill to harmonise and merge about eight environment laws in the state into one after taking the third reading.

The bill is titled, ‘A Bill for a Law to Consolidate all Laws relating to the Environment for the Management, Protection and Sustainable Development of the Environment in Lagos State and for Connected Purposes.’

Speaker Mudashiru Obasa directed the Clerk of the House, Mr. Azeez Sanni to send a clean copy of the bill to Governor Akinwunmi Ambode for his signature.

Immediately the governor assents to the bill which originated from the executive, an executive bill, it will become a law.

The House two weeks ago cut short its six weeks recess to attend to the bill and same week it took the first and second reading of the bill and held a public hearing on the bill the same week.

Last week the report of the committee on the environment chaired by Saka Fafunmi was presented for debate and yesterday the bill passed through the third reading and was passed by the House.

Because of the apprehension and opposition of waste managers to the bill which had necessitated their protest to the House twice in one week  two weeks ago and strong position expressed at the public hearing as they claimed that the new law will ground their business, the House had last week allayed their fears.

While presenting the committee report last week, Fafunmi stated that the intention of government is not to take away the job of waste managers and give it  to foreign investors, rather that it is a legal framework where both local and foreign investors would be accommodated in the process.

According to Fafunmi, the bill intends to create a level ground for both local and international investors and that it indeed  favours local investors more.

The Speaker, Mudashiru Obasa insisted then on ensuring the need to protect the local investors, saying “we should do it in a way that they will be accommodated”.