Seventeen people were recently convicted by a Lagos Magistrate Court for urinating and defecating in public spaces.
The Lagos Waste Management Authority (LAWMA) made the arrests. A magistrate at Bolade, Oshodi heard the cases, and each defendant was ordered to pay ₦40,000 or serve one month in prison.
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The Lagos State Government announced the outcome on Saturday, describing open defecation as an act that degrades public spaces and damages the image of the city.
Environmental Sanitation Enforcement Update
Seventeen (17) environmental offenders apprehended by Lagos Waste Management Authority (LAWMA) were arraigned before the Magistrate Court sitting at Bolade, Oshodi, for urinating and defecating in open spaces. The defendants were… pic.twitter.com/134kfiHH7G
— The Lagos State Govt (@followlasg) February 21, 2026
It was, on the surface, a routine court matter. But in the context of Nigerian governance, it was anything but.
The Value of Following Through
Most states in Nigeria have environmental sanitation laws that prohibit open defecation and related offences. The problem has never been the absence of legislation. It has been the absence of enforcement. Offences that are technically illegal are treated in practice as tolerable, and the result is visible in the condition of public spaces across the country.
What Lagos demonstrated in this instance was something deceptively straightforward: that the system can work when each part of it does its job. An agency made arrests. A court heard the cases and returned convictions. The government communicated the outcome to the public. That sequence — arrest, prosecution, conviction, public disclosure — is the template other states should be looking at, not because it is complicated, but because it is so rarely completed in full.
Accountability Requires More Than a Fine
There is a legitimate concern that enforcement of this kind falls hardest on those with the fewest options. Public toilets remain inadequate in many of Lagos’s most densely populated areas, and the same is true across Nigerian cities. Prosecuting people for behaviour that poverty and poor infrastructure can drive raises questions about fairness that no government should dismiss lightly.
But that concern should lead to investment in facilities, not to the abandonment of standards. The two obligations can and must exist together. A government that provides accessible public conveniences and enforces sanitation law is making a coherent argument. A government that does neither is simply failing its residents twice over.
What the Rest of the Country Should Take From This
Other states do not need new laws to address public nuisance. They need the institutional discipline to enforce the ones they have. That means empowering sanitation agencies to act, ensuring the courts are engaged as genuine partners in environmental governance, and being willing to communicate enforcement outcomes openly rather than treating them as embarrassments.
FURTHER READING
Lagos is not held up here as a model of perfection. It is held up as an example of what becomes possible when a government decides, on a specific issue, to be consistent. Seventeen convictions will not transform a megacity. But they establish a standard, and standards, applied with seriousness over time, have a way of changing behaviour. That is the lesson worth learning.
Philip Ibitoye is a Special Correspondent with EKO HOT BLOG. Click here to find daily analysis and critical insight on trending issues in Lagos and other parts of Nigeria.
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