Every rainy season, Lagos holds its breath. Streets vanish under brown water. Cars stall mid-bridge. Families wade home carrying what they can save. And every year, the same question resurfaces: who let this happen — and who, if anyone, is prepared to stop it? For decades, the honest answer was uncomfortable: almost no one. Lagos grew faster than its institutions could discipline it. Canals became building sites. Setbacks became shopfronts. Drainage channels, the very veins meant to carry floodwater safely out to sea, were quietly strangled by concrete, refuse and neglect. Each administration inherited the mess, patched what it could, and moved on. The waterways kept losing. That pattern is now being tested — forcefully — by the Lagos State Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources under Commissioner Tokunbo Wahab, working alongside the drainage administration and officials such as Engineer Dapo Ajadi. Their approach is blunt, occasionally
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