I’ll make sure you never pee again, By Funke Egbemode

It was on March 6. I caught this well dressed guy peeing in the drainage at the turning to my house. Already stressed from sitting in traffic for hours after attending the 2026 edition of Obafemi Awolowo Foundation Annual Lecture in Ikenne, I wound down my car window and bellowed at him, very angry; ‘Next time you pee near my house like that, I’ll make sure you never pee again.’ He was shocked.

Even I was more shocked at my threat. How exactly was I going to make him stop peeing? Really, Funke. I quickly wound up the window. My driver burst into laughter. But I was angry. Would he do that in America or Dubai? We just think Nigeria is about nonsense, all and every type of nonsense.

But let us start at the beginning.

Once upon a Lagos morning when the sun still rose gently and not like a landlord knocking for rent there was a decree: thou shalt clean thy surroundings… or else.

The story begins in the no nonsense days of Muhammadu Buhari and his equally stern deputy, Tunde Idiagbon. Nigeria in 1984 was not smiling. Indiscipline was everywhere on the roads, in offices, and very visibly, in the gutters that had long given up on flowing.

So the government did what strict African parents do when children misbehave: they introduced a national “reset button” called the War Against Indiscipline. WAI for short. And one of WAI’s most famous children was Saturday Environmental Sanitation.

Now, this was not your gentle “please sweep your compound” suggestion. Oh no. This was law, backed by soldiers, whistles, and the kind of stare that could make a grown man remember his childhood sins.

On the last Saturday of every month, between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m., Nigeria would pause. Markets went quiet. Roads emptied. Even the ever busy Lagos danfo drivers respected themselves at least for those three hours. Movement was restricted. If you were found outside without a broom, cutlass, or at least the look of someone going to fetch water, you were in trouble.

And trouble had a uniform for years.

Soldiers and sanitation officers mounted roadblocks like exam invigilators. “Where are you going?” they would bark.

“To buy bread,” one unfortunate fellow might reply.

“At 8 a.m.? On sanitation day? Bread that cannot wait till 10?” Next thing, he was doing frog jumps beside a gutter, contemplating his life choices.

But here’s the beautiful chaos of it all: people actually cleaned.

Families came out in their oldest clothes, armed with brooms that had seen better days. Children were drafted like reluctant soldiers. Mothers supervised like generals. Fathers, who usually had “urgent meetings”, suddenly became experts in clearing drains.

Gutters were desilted. Bushes were cut. Refuse was gathered into obedient heaps, waiting for trucks that sometimes came… and sometimes had their own plans.

There was also community spirit real, raw, unfiltered.

Neighbours who had not spoken in months would suddenly bond over a stubborn pile of dirt. “Madam, push it small!”

“Oga, carry that side!” Before you knew it, sanitation had become a mini festival of forced unity.

Of course, Nigerians being Nigerians, creativity found its way in. Some people sprinkled water in front of their houses and disappeared indoors. Others swept the same spot for two hours, perfecting the art of “appearing busy.” And a few brave souls tried to sneak out only to be escorted back by uniformed reality or slammed with a fine or infuriating delays.

Over time, as democracy returned and soldiers retreated to the barracks, the fear factor reduced. The whistles became softer, enforcement grew weaker. And like many good Nigerian habits, Saturday sanitation began to fade, surviving today in fragments across states.

But for those who remember, it was a time when the nation paused not for football, not for elections but to face its dirt, literally.

And for three disciplined hours, Nigeria almost looked like a country that had its act together.

Then, it was cancelled or revoked or adjusted to function in all markets on Thursday. I guess someone thought only market women are dirty and so should be made to lock up their stalls and shops in the markets and shopping complexes till 10 am every Thursday. That fellow forgot that the fabric dealer came from an estate, the pepper trader and the butcher came from one community that remained unswept and unkempt. So, as that smell that made it impossible to enjoy street rice on ‘horo Dosunmu’ and Amala on point in Surulere and Ogba disappeared, they simply returned ‘home’. Yes, to the streets, even 3 star estates. They started lining the streets in black suspicious bags, streets that ought to be tree lined.

On your way to work, you see urchins and beggars just rising from sleep, scratching and spitting, then you see the black dustbin bags, standing or sitting, glaring at you, as if in defiance, dozens of them. And my grandmother taught my sister and I that beholding dirt or stepping into dirt early in the morning is bad luck, indeed she said it can make the beholder poor. Maybe these dirt and dirt bags are the reasons behind the tough life in Lagos. Everybody is running into one another, working from dawn to dusk, with little or no profit to take ‘home’ during Sallah and Christmas.

Governor Babajide Sanwo Olu must have seen that Lagos was going back to Egypt. Maybe he and his cabinet members also had grandmothers like mine and have realised that where filth dwells, wealth cannot live.

So, as Lagos debates the return of Saturday environmental sanitation, let us approach it not as a punishment, but as a reset button.

The commissioners must have all perceived the stubborn smell that clings to certain streets in the state, that smell that is not the rich aroma of buka pepper soup or the seductive invitation of suya smoke curling into the evening air. What we have these days is the old, angry smell of neglect of overflowing plastic bags flowing into gutters that are clogged and dead.

Between 2016 and now, Lagos has become a city that forgot that cleanliness is not a luxury, it is survival.

Welcome to the shocking cost of a dirty Lagos.

We like to think dirt is just an eyesore, something you wrinkle your nose at, complain about, and then jump over on your way to hustle. But dirt is expensive, very expensive.

First, let’s talk money. Lagosians spend billions yearly treating diseases that thrive in filth malaria, cholera, typhoid.

That “small fever” that keeps you in bed for three days? It is not small. It is rent money quietly walking out of your pocket.

It is productivity slipping through your fingers. It is school fees ending up as hospital receipts.

Then there is flooding. Ah, Lagos floods are usually accompanied by dramatic lamentations of emotional blackmail that rain or sea mermaids have come to collect their due. We conveniently forget that gutters clogged with pure water sachets, plastic bottles, and yesterday’s indifference confuses rain when it arrives. It has to go somewhere. Your living room, bedroom, compound filled with expensive cars become options. Your stocked warehouse is another option. Since you cannot unclog or desilt your drainages, your new smart television must float. Your queen size mattresses will drink until it’s drunk. Shops will shut down. Goods worth billions of naira will spoil. You are free to call it “natural disaster”, government negligence or even ‘village people attack’, we all know nature does not punish us unprovoked.

But Lagos did not just wake up dirty. No city does. Dirt is a slow rebellion. It begins with one person dropping a sachet on the road. Then another. Then a whole street decides that the gutter is a trash can. Before long, the system collapses not because it was weak, but because we were careless.

And somewhere in all of this, we quietly retired one of the simplest, most effective civic habits we ever had: the three hour Saturday environmental sanitation.

Now that Lagos is ‘bringing back our environmental’ with effect from April 25, some people are protesting. Even me too has something to protest. I would have preferred the sanitation period to stretch till noon. Let our men breathe. Let them relax at home. They are too stressed. Let their wives tend and attend to them from all angles. Let children see their fathers. This new sanitation period is too short. There are too many cobwebs men, sorry, all of us, have to clear. Let us patiently clean it. Please let all other protests and protesters go and rest. I am seriously single minded about this. This is a domestic matter. It does not concern the lawyers. Or are these lawyers against women’s peace of mind?

Let’s go down memory lane.

The last Saturday of the month once arrived like a stern headmistress. From 7am to 10am, movement was restricted.

No okada racing past. No danfo honking impatiently. Lagos would pause. And in that pause, something magical happened, people cleaned.

Children swept compounds grudgingly. Mothers supervised like generals. Fathers suddenly remembered how to handle cutlasses and shovels. Gutters were cleared. Bushes were trimmed. Refuse was gathered. Streets breathed again.

It was not perfect. Some people hid indoors, pretending to be “not around.” Others bribed their way past enforcement officers. But overall, it worked. It reminded us that a city is not cleaned by government alone; it is maintained by its people.

Then we stopped.

Seriously though, freedom fighters and human rights activists and their high sounding sleek arguments brought us here. Not everything can be solved with big English.

Rake, brooms and cutlasses deployed well are more effective sometimes. Why do Lagosians always have somewhere to go sef? Where are they always going before day break? How will two or three hours in a whole month to clean your own environment for your own good be a problem? What kind of people are we if we always want to blame others for things we leave or left undone?

Take traffic, for instance.

A blocked drainage today is a flooded road tomorrow. A flooded road becomes gridlock. Gridlock becomes lost man hours. Lost man hours become economic loss. By the time you trace it back, you will find that the problem started with a plastic bottle or moin moin leaves someone casually tossed aside weeks ago.

But perhaps the most shocking cost is not financial.

It is psychological.

There is something that dirt does to the human mind.

It lowers standards.

It whispers,

“Nobody cares.”

And when nobody cares, anything goes. You see refuse on the road, and you add your own. You see a dirty environment, and you stop expecting better from yourself, from your neighbours, leaders, from your society.

Cleanliness, on the other hand, inspires order. It creates pride. It tells people,

“This place matters.” And when a place matters, people behave differently.

Now that conversations about the return of Saturday environmental sanitation has resurfaced, we must resist the urge to roll our eyes and mutter ‘oh no’.

This is not about nostalgia.

It is about necessity.

Imagine Lagos pausing again, just for three hours once a month. Imagine millions of people stepping out at the same time to clean their immediate environment. Imagine gutters flowing freely, streets looking decent, and refuse managed before it becomes a crisis.

Will it solve everything?

No.

But will it help? Absolutely.

Of course, there is a downside to the movement restriction. Lagos is bigger now. Busier. More complex.

Restricting movement may disrupt businesses, especially for those who survive on daily income. Enforcement could become another avenue for harassment if not properly managed.

These are valid worries.

But here is the thing: every meaningful system requires adjustment, not abandonment. If the old model had flaws, then fix it. Lagos state government must find a way to deploy technology, flexibility for effective enforcement. Education and reorientation of citizens and communities are key to the success of this project.

What we cannot afford is to do nothing because doing nothing is what got us here.

We must also be honest with ourselves. Government cannot sweep every street or clear every gutter. You cannot throw refuse from your car window and then blame the state for flooding. You cannot block drainage with construction waste and then complain when water enters your house.

The return of Saturday sanitation, therefore, is not just a policy discussion. It is a mirror. It forces us to confront our habits, our laziness, our entitlement.

Do we really want a clean Lagos or we just want to complain about a dirty one?

Because the two require very different levels of commitment.

So, as Lagos debates the return of Saturday environmental sanitation, let us approach it not as a punishment, but as a reset button.

Let us remember that Yoruba poem we used to recite in primary school.

Imototo b’ori arun mo’le.

Bi oye tii b’ori ooru

Cleanliness defeats diseases, just like the cold harmattan wind trumps heat.

Three hours of inconvenience versus months of avoidable illness.

Three hours of discipline versus billions lost to preventable damage.

Three hours of collective effort versus a lifetime of complaining.

The math is simple.

Lagos is too important to be dirty, too vibrant to be suffocated by refuse, too ambitious to be slowed down by preventable diseases.