I live on the mainland and have traversed the breadth and length of Lagos mainland. Well, most of it, and I can tell you for a fact that it smells like an open septic tank. There are two common sources of the smell. I would have said three, but one is a double-edged sword (open gutters and sewage), while the other is refuse dumps.
For the open gutters and sewage double whammy, there is a thing I have come to learn about Lagos (I didn’t grow up here): most public spaces don’t have a toilet. A lot of businesses and some mosques use the gutter as their toilet. They usually create a makeshift private area that is made of zinc metal sheets for people to do their business. In there, people (mostly men) can urinate and empty their bowels.
Once that is done, it drops straight into the gutter, waiting for the rain to fall and flush it to a dead end of blocked drainage. Now this is where the second part of the double whammy enters the chat. Lagos does not have a drainage system. The gutter does not flow; it is stagnant. There is no final destination for whatever enters the gutters. The rain falls and fills up the gutters with rainwater, and when the sun shines, to facilitates the evaporation that dries up the gutters. Basically, Lagos lets nature do its thing.
Since we have gotten the first cause of the septic tank smell of Lagos out of the way, it is time to tackle the second one, which is the refuse dump problem. There is no proper waste management system in Lagos state, and this is why, when most people are tired of their trash piling up at home, they dump it in the streets or on the main road. This is also besides the fact that there are no trash bins on every major road or street for people to throw their little papers, wrappers and plastic bottles into when they are on the move.
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All of this home garbage and street garbage come together, mix, decay and fill the air with smells that are so choking, one cannot breathe. Some people may say, “You just have to pay LAWMA to show up”. Well, in my area, we did, and LAWMA only showed up once a quarter to collect trash.
The smell is worse during the dry season because harmattan just has a way of making smells dry and funkier. However, the rainy season is a special time for the smell because even if it doesn’t smell that bad, your skin is forced to make contact with contents from the open gutters and roadside decomposed trash. As there is no drainage system, when the rain falls, the gutter fills up, and flooding happens. All those faeces, urine, bathwater, and decomposed organic matter - all of it- mixes with the water that is the flood, and since the average Lagosian has no choice but to walk on flood water, their skin makes contact with it.
Everyone knows Lagos smells, the easiest way to tell locals and visitors know that Lagos smells is by how much spitting they do. If you are by luck, far away from the smell, and you see a nonpregnant person at a fair enough distance spitting copiously a number of times, that is code for, “this place stinks”.The glorified swamp called Lagos Yesterday after a little rain. According to reports Lagos will sink beneath the sea they claimed tinubu tamed in less than 40 years. pic.twitter.com/9ExxzQkAqW
— Marquis Of Infamy 🪶🪶🪶 (@Unabombaar) April 30, 2025