Traders and residents at Ikirun Alamisi Market seek help with refuse dumping

IKIRUN, Nigeria — Traders and residents around Alamisi Market in Ikirun, Osun State, are asking the government for help clearing dumped refuse that they say is harming their health and their businesses. The video above, built from interviews recorded at the market, shows the refuse and what people say it is like to live and work beside it.

“The smell of the dumped refuse here is becoming unbearable to us,” said Maria Mátànmí, a resident and community elder. “We therefore call on the government to come to our aid by helping us to clear and clean the area.”

Tobiloba Temilade, 20, a resident, described what passersby experience. “There’s no way a passerby will pass here without covering their nose,” Temilade said.

Traders offered specific proposals. Idayat Iyalode, a clothing seller, asked the government to provide disposal spaces in the market and to set up an environmental task force responsible for waste disposal there. She also suggested turning the dumping sites into shopping centers and providing toilets for traders. “We seek government support to provide spaces where people in the market can be dumping their refuse,” Iyalode said.

Fruit seller Aminat Adéyẹmí said the refuse makes displaying fruit difficult, especially when it rains. She said she blocked off her own area to stop dumping and asked for waste bins at strategic points in the market, which she said would let traders monitor anyone who fails to use them.

A female trader who asked not to be named said traders on the market’s hilly side regularly dispose of waste near her shop. “If we had had an alternative way of selling our products, we would have left this place a long time ago,” she said.

Habeeb Adeyemi O., a community activist and consultant to Osun State’s ministries of environment and health, said traders from across the state and beyond come to the market every Thursday. “You can’t just look away from this mess,” Adeyemi said. He warned of a cholera outbreak and urged the responsible agencies to act quickly.

Indiscriminate dumping is a wider concern in the state. A 2023 study in Frontiers in Sustainability, citing earlier research, reported that 35% of Osun residents dispose of waste by the roadside, at dumpsites or in the bush, and that only 25% use waste collectors.

The state government has announced new measures. Gov. Ademola Adeleke approved a compulsory two-hour sanitation exercise every Thursday from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m., according to a statement on the Osun State government website by Samuel Ayanleye Aina, the head of service and chairman of the new Osun State Environmental Sanitation Taskforce. Markets, shops and offices must clean their premises, and law enforcement agents are to enforce compliance but not arrest anyone, the statement said. Earlier this month, Amotekun Corps officers arrested more than 30 people over environmental offences, local outlets reported.

Residents and traders said they are waiting for the cleanup, waste bins and disposal spaces they have requested.