The Lagos Waste Management Authority (LAWMA) recycled 405.17 tonnes of electronic waste in Lagos State in 2025, its managing director, Muyiwa Gbadegesin, revealed in an interview with journalists in Lagos. This marks an increase from 355.15 tonnes in 2024 and 305.63 tonnes in 2023, indicating a consistent upward trend in formal e-waste recycling. E-waste includes discarded electrical and electronic devices such as laptops, mobile phones, batteries, refrigerators, and televisions, many of which contain hazardous materials like lead and mercury. Gbadegesin attributed the improvement to intensified government advocacy and the establishment of an e-Waste Unit to coordinate management across the state. He noted that 17 certified recycling companies and approved collection centres handle e-waste in Lagos, with LAWMA ensuring waste is directed to these formal channels. The agency also works to regulate the sector by formalising informal operators and raising awareness about the dangers of e-waste.
Environmental experts have raised concerns about the scale of the challenge. Leslie Adogame, executive director of Sustainable Research and Action for Environmental Development (SRADeV), stressed that awareness of e-waste hazards remains low, especially among households, and lags behind plastic waste awareness. He cited weak collection systems, poor waste segregation, limited recycling capacity, and underfunding as major barriers. Adogame called for dedicated bins, structured sorting, and stronger implementation of extended producer responsibility. Adedayo Adebayo, director in charge of e-waste at the Lagos State Environmental Protection Agency (LASEPA), emphasized the need for awareness at the point of collection and confirmed the agency conducts environmental monitoring around operational sites. LASEPA also collaborates with ministries to organise informal operators into cooperatives. Philip Jakpor of Renevlyn Development Initiative and Friday Oku, president of the Association of Scrap and Wastepickers of Lagos, both noted insufficient public awareness and heavy reliance on informal e-waste handling.
Muyiwa Gbadegesin's disclosure of a 405.17-tonne e-waste recycle in 2025 presents a neat upward trend, but the real story lies in the widening gap between official figures and ground-level reality. While LAWMA celebrates incremental gains, the persistence of informal handling—highlighted by Friday Oku's observation of limited formal support—suggests the state's efforts are not yet reshaping the broader waste ecosystem. The fact that only 17 certified recyclers operate in Nigeria's most populous city, as acknowledged by Gbadegesin, underscores a system stretched far beyond capacity.
Behind the statistics is a deeper governance challenge: Lagos is managing symptoms, not causes. Despite the creation of an e-Waste Unit and certification of recyclers, structural flaws remain. Leslie Adogame's point about poor household awareness hits at a core failure—public engagement has been peripheral, not central. When waste segregation is rare and mixed streams overwhelm facilities, even expanded infrastructure would buckle. The underfunding of agencies like SRADeV and LASEPA further hollows out long-term impact, turning awareness campaigns into occasional events rather than sustained movements.
For ordinary Lagosians, especially low-income communities near disposal sites, the stakes are physiological. Exposure to arsenic, lead, and mercury—substances named by Adogame—is not theoretical; it is daily reality for wastepickers and nearby residents. Without dedicated collection bins and enforced sorting, as Jakpor insists, toxic materials will keep leaching into soil and water. Children and women, already flagged as vulnerable, face disproportionate harm from this silent contamination.
This is not an isolated Lagos problem but a mirror of Nigeria's broader environmental governance: reactive, fragmented, and under-resourced. The push to formalise informal operators into cooperatives, noted by Adebayo, hints at a belated recognition of grassroots realities. But until policy matches scale, Lagos will keep recycling headlines more efficiently than e-waste.
