I have come to the conclusion that Lagos State can be both a sweet and a scary place to live in.

In Ojodu Berger and Ikeja, Onipanu and Egbeda, Ojuelegba and Surulere, you will find many uncovered manholes. It’s like that in many other parts of Lagos. What happens when manhole covers go missing, and where do they end up?

The fact that open manholes could be a ticking time bomb dawned on me in June, when I slipped right beside an open manhole along Ogunnusi Road, Ojodu Berger. I was a little bit carried away when I passed through the area on that fateful day, but I managed to regain control as one of my legs briefly dangled above it.

Manholes are underground holes, which could be deep, shallow or normal, that serve as a point of access to a sewer or drainage system. While the most common shape for a manhole is a circle, it could be a square or rectangle in some cases. Workers often climb down through manholes to examine or clean the drains.

These underground holes are typically covered by removable metal lids called manhole covers. And there is a reason they have these coverings.

“They protect unwary pedestrians from inadvertently falling into the sewers, but also protect the sewers from debris, such as trash or organic materials, which … could potentially clog sewers and water systems,” stated a report published by Live Science.

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OPEN MANHOLES, DEATH TRAPS

A few weeks before my near fall, a friend mentioned that she had heard of a civil servant who fell into an open manhole in the Onipanu area of Lagos and his dead body wasn’t retrieved until some days later. I found some news reports on the incident, which happened in May.

The deceased was a drainage worker identified as Tajudeen Amololo. He was found dead five days after he was trapped in an underground tunnel at Onipanu Bus Stop. According to reports, the man was trying to clear a blocked portion of the tunnel to allow a free flow of drainage water when he got stuck.

If a drainage worker, assumed to be a professional, got trapped and wound up dead in an underground hole in Lagos, what is the fate of an average resident?

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A male colleague also saw a boy fall inside an uncovered manhole at Egbeda Bus Stop around 6:50 pm on June 6, a rainy Thursday in Lagos. This was how my colleague described it: “I was one of at least a dozen people waiting by the main road, just behind the cars that crowded the front of Jendol Supermarket. The gutter was the only structure that separated the pedestrian sidewalk from the main road, but it disappeared under that thin pavement the cars crossed to drive into the supermarket.

“There were three rectangular manholes in the pavement with two covers missing. As they squeezed between people waiting for buses and parked cars intruding on the pavement, anyone who wasn’t looking ahead could miss the open manholes and step right into them. That happened to the boy who looked 11 or 12 years old.

“Because so many people were standing and moving in such a small space on the same pavement, a young man was close enough to pull the boy out of the gutter as soon as he dropped into it. He had bruised a knee and both hands and his legs were stained with dirty gutter water. His mother and two younger brothers were just behind him. The rainy sky had made the evening look darker for that time of the day, and the crowd of cars prevented most of the supermarket lights from spilling on the pavement and its open manholes.”

In video clips and images of open manholes in Ojuelegba and Surulere shared with me, I noticed one manhole covered with a car tyre. This colleague of mine said she counted about six of them in front of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) secretariat in Surulere.

When I visited the Onipanu area on Friday, June 14, I counted more than six manholes without covers. In fact, there were three uncovered holes at the foot of the pedestrian bridge at the bus stop.

I observed that many of these uncovered manholes are often located on pavements, where pedestrians walk through. Sometimes, residents could stand on the top of a covered manhole or close to the mouth of the uncovered ones. Wrongly calculated steps could be disastrous.

I also noticed that some of the manhole covers were filled with garbage and waste water, which made them a breeding ground for mosquitoes and other flies that are attracted to dirt. The fact that this can be irritating to the eyes and also cause health challenges is disconcerting.

VANDALISED OR STOLEN?

There is a high possibility that many of the missing manhole covers in Lagos were stolen and sold as scraps at the scrap market.

A man around the Onipanu area last Friday hinted that those who deal in iron and metal scraps might be responsible for many uncovered manholes in the state.

In May, the state government issued a warning against the vandalisation and theft of public assets. According to Tokunbo Wahab, the Lagos State Commissioner for Environment and Water Resources, theft and vandalisation of government property, especially those that are valuable and profitable, have become common.

Wahab noted that “anyone caught in vandalism and sale of items like railings on sidewalks, bridges, railroad tracks, iron from concrete barriers, as well as manhole covers, will face the law”.

From visits to two iron markets, one at Owode Onirin and the other at New Garage, close to the Odo Iya Alaro link bridge construction, last Friday, I discovered that the unregulated buying and sale of scrap iron and metal might be a contributory factor to the unabated theft and vandalisation of manhole covers.

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Just as the two men I met at Owode Onirin, along Ikorodu Road, were eager to accompany me to the imaginary house where I claimed my mom had some abandoned iron rods to sell, those at New Garage were also hooked.

In both places, the men I spoke with told me over and over that I could bring any type of iron or metal for sale. No questions asked about the origin of what I wanted to sell. Just questions about the quantity and type of iron and when I would return with the items. What this implies is that vandals can easily make ends meet just by stealing manhole covers and selling them to the highest bidders.

At Owode Onirin, a kilogramme of iron scrap sells for N500, while it costs N400 at the New Garage area. This means if a manhole cover weighs 10kg, one can earn N5000 or N4000, or even more if one’s able to negotiate with the buyer.

The moment I showed one of the buyers at New Garage a picture of a manhole cover, I could feel his excitement soar. I had previously shown him images of rusty iron rods, and he had told me I could sell those types to him. But as soon as I showed him a manhole cover, he said, “Oh my God! This is the exact type we want. Just come with any iron you want to sell. Don’t worry, we’ll be doing business together.”

I sent an email to the Lagos State Ministry of Works and Infrastructure on Thursday evening for inquiries on the replacement and safety measures for manholes, but no response had been received at the time of publication.

Abimbola Abatta is a reporter with FIJ, writing reports in partnership with Report for the World which matches local newsrooms with talented emerging journalists to report on under-covered issues around the globe.