Fadekemi Ajakaiye
Counsel to Excellens Links International, a registered waste collection, management and administration company in Oshodi/Isolo LGA of Lagos State, David Fadile, has appealed to some residents of Oshodi against violating the 2022 Lagos State Waste Management Authority (LAWMA) rates increment.
He said the Lagos State Waste Management Authority (LAWMA) in 2022, increased waste tariffs across the state, stating that the increment was necessitated due to the cost of diesel and foreign exchange, coupled with some operational costs.
He urged them not only to be law abiding but also to strictly keep to the court order prohibiting them from running campaigns in the social media to run down the Oshodi waste management companies.
Fadile said the people, who are less than 0.1 percent of the people of Oshodi, and that in 2022, about six individuals filed a suit against Excellens Links and Tunap Company, both PSP operators servicing Oshodi environs, on the ground of increase in waste disposal tariff.
”LAWMA has to effect an increase in waste tariff and my client being one of the franchisees of LAWMA, effected this increase in Oshodi community.
“So, it is this increase that these individuals, about five or six of them, led by Engr. Babatunde Faleye filed an action in court.”
According to him, “On December 18, 2023, the court struck out the suit, with the prayer that the claimants shall not use social media to campaign against the business of the third and fourth defendants – Excellens Links International Company and Tunap Company.”
He said, “Last year, they went to court in Suit No. ID/7076GCM/2023 to challenge Excellens Links and Tunap on the LAWMA increment but seeing that their case would be futile, their lawyer made to withdraw their suit but he was opposed to it by counsel to Excellens and Tunap.
“The judge handling the matter sought to know why he was opposed to the purported noble act that could enthrone peace, he told him that he was sure that they will take to the social media to be running campaigns that will not only malign his clients’ companies but run them down if the suit withdrawal was granted.”
The judge, he said, consequently granted the withdrawal notice with the order that they should not use the social media to campaign against the defendants in the suit, Excellens Links and Tunap, just as they were awarded N50,000 each as compensation for filing processes and appearing in court against the plaintiffs.
The lawyer dismissed the recent intrusion of some new PSP operators into Oshodi, stating that the acts of the so called new operators trying to affect and distrupt the activities of the existing PSP Operatives in Oshodi, describing them as a vapour, that will soon melt away, vanish back into thin air, he said, saying that they could be charging anything now, cheaper rates, stating that such charges are greek gifts, they can’t remain here, it doesn’t work out that way, it’s impossible for anybody to do that business at N400, N500 now with the high cost of diesel with which the compactors taking the waste away for disposal at N1,200 a litre, then the high cost rate of the vehicles themselves, the spare parts for the maintenance of the vehicles, foreign exchange rates if you get to buy at all and then, the soaring interest rates on bank loans to have these things done, describing Excellens as a first generation award-winning PSP operator of over 25 years standing in Lagos with eight functional compactors today, having became an operator under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as Lagos State Governor, who commenced the initiative with Lagos terribly dirty and dumpsites all over the city then.
LAWMA, he said, is a party to the suit in court, saying that it cannot withdraw the franchise of a client as Excellens, serving in four wards, revealing that there is a franchise agreement to the effect and that the agreement remains in operation till 2026 unless it is breached, just as no other operator can go into the jurisdiction of another under the agreement, he concluded.
