Good morning,
Commuters on Cele Bridge have learned to hold their breath. The trash mounds have grown for weeks, blocking drains, attracting rodents, and turning a busy Mushin crossing into a dump. When it rains, the water rises, and the filth spreads. Residents say collection trucks rarely come. LAWMA says it is ramping up pickups and urges residents to stop illegal dumping. Governor Sanwo-Olu has declared a limited state of emergency on waste. Lagos generates over 13,000 tonnes of refuse daily, and only a fraction is collected properly. The emergency may help. The root cause remains.
The fuel sector is fighting itself again. NMDPRA has approved import licences for 830,000 tonnes of petrol for the fourth quarter, the fourth consecutive quarterly increase this year. Six companies will split the allocation. Dangote Refinery has challenged the licences in court, arguing that continued imports undercut a facility built to end Nigeria’s reliance on foreign fuel. The case returns to the Federal High Court on 7 October. The tension is structural: the regulator wants supply security, the refiner wants market share. Meanwhile, the same regulator sealed about 20 filling stations in Abuja for under-dispensing fuel between 2025 and 2026. Motorists have commended the crackdown. Under-dispensing is theft at the pump. Enforcement must continue.
The grid ran at 86 per cent utilisation in August. NERC reports that grid-connected plants used 4,102 megawatts of an available 4,758 megawatts. Afam_2 hit a 99 per cent load factor. That is efficient operation. It does not mean the fleet is large. Nigeria has 13,625 megawatts of installed capacity, but available capacity has rarely exceeded 5,000 megawatts. The grid collapsed entirely in January and partially in August. Manufacturers still rely on generators. Households still face daily outages. Efficiency within a limited system is not enough. Nigeria needs more generation, better transmission, and fewer collapses.
In Minna, the youths of Anguwan Tunga are refusing to be paid off. Thirty-seven men died in NSCDC custody after being arrested at the M.I. Wushishi and Shiroro mining axis. The state sent about ₦100,000 per household. The community calls it toshon baki, hush money. They want to know how the men died. Survivors described 65 detainees packed into a cell with no ventilation, banging on the door until they could not breathe. A mother holding her child and a stack of notes said the youths went to the mines because there are no jobs. The NSCDC has arrested 24 officers. A panel is investigating. The community wants more than symbols.
On Friday, Moses Simon will earn his 100th cap for the Super Eagles in the AFCON qualifier against Madagascar in Uyo, joining Ahmed Musa, Vincent Enyeama, Joseph Yobo and Alex Iwobi. It is a milestone of longevity in a demanding position. The NFF will honour him before kickoff. And the Federal Government is seeking $1.2 billion in private capital for a 90,000-kilometre fibre network, with rollout expected to begin in October. The project aims to take the national network from 35,000km to 125,000km. Fibre is the backbone of the digital economy. The test is whether the rollout reaches the communities that need it most.
Trash on the bridge. A refinery in court. A grid running near its small capacity. A community refusing blood money. A footballer earning his 100th cap. A fibre network waiting to be built. These are not separate stories. They are the same story: a country where infrastructure lags, institutions fight themselves, and ordinary people keep waiting for the system to work.
Warmly,
Lolade