‘’CORPORATE CRIMINALITY ’’IN ENVIRONMENTAL OFFENCES: WHEN CITIZENS LACK BASIC KNOWLEDGE ABOUT ITS STATE LAWS AND REGULATIONS.

 

“Àìmọ̀ kì í jẹ́ kó mọ̀ pé òun kò mọ̀.” (Ignorance prevents a person from realizing they are ignorant)

It should not be news. It should be ordinary. The fact that it feels extraordinary tells you everything you need to know about Nigeria's environmental governance crisis — and about the peculiar, persistent stupidity of the elite. We now leave in a world where a truly ignorant person lacks self-awareness and justify government action for personal branding. You don’t speak on the issues you lack basic knowledge about. It is Psuudo-intellectual, Dilettante and Ignoramus.

Not a complex regulatory grey area. Not a contested technical compliance standard. Raw sewage—the most elemental, ancient, and universal of environmental offences — reportedly being discharged either directly or through unapproved connections into drainage systems that feed into Lagos's already dangerously compromised waterways should not be in the news nor what some elite will justify the action on lack of central sewage system in the State.

The stupidity is not intellectual. It is moral, institutional, and cultural. Let us be clear about what we mean by stupidity here. We do not mean cognitive failure. The executives, board members, and facility managers of any corporate organization involved in the discharge of raw sewage into public area by any measurable standard are highly educated, internationally exposed, and demonstrably intelligent people who manage complex derivatives portfolios, navigate multi-jurisdiction regulatory frameworks, and can recite Basel III capital adequacy ratios in their sleep.

Globally, 52% of global wastewater is treated in the Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTPs). Israel is the world leader in wastewater treatment. Nearly 90% of wastewater in Israel is treated for reuse, most of it in agricultural irrigation. While Israel reuses almost all of its wastewater, Europe recycles merely 60%. Sewage treatment rates in Africa are generally below 30%, with many low-income countries treating less than 10% of their wastewater. The challenges facing waste water treatment in developing countries is beyond governance structure or lack of regulations. A 2024 research by Environmental System indicates lack of investment, inadequate financing for operation and maintenance, shortages of skilled technical personnel etc has part of the problem facing waste water treatment plant infrastructure in most Africa counties.

So when mega structures are built in Nigeria and other many African countries, it is the responsibilities of the developer to put in place a standard waste water treatment plant that will treat the sewage to allowable discharge standard that meet regulations for public discharge purpose. So when an organization fail to meet this standards. It is simple a violation of the law and not the lack of central sewage system by government of municipalities. For example: A joint venture (Sembcorp Nanjing Suiwu) was fined 10 million yuan for illegal discharge of wastewater, with executives jailed, when a treatment system failed to operate properly. Also, Thames Water (UK) was hit with a record penalty (£122.7m fine (2024) by regulator Ofwat for failing to manage sewage treatment works and sewer networks, resulting in frequent spills. So failure to pretreat your sewage or waste water to required standard before discharge is an environmental offence. No justification. No PR stunt nor lawyers, bloggers or economist becoming environmental justices advocate overnight simply because a corporate organization fails in its ESG mandatory principle.

There is a particular cruelty in the fact that most corporate organization involved in corporate environmental criminality are among the Nigerian organization that have most loudly and publicly positioned themselves as champions of sustainability. Not metaphorical sewage. Not ESG-compliance-gap sewage. Literal, physical, bacterial sewage, apparently being discharged in violation of the very environmental laws that most own sustainability frameworks claim to support. This is not a minor contradiction. It is a structural indictment of the way corporate sustainability is practice in Nigeria — as a communications strategy rather than an operational commitment. ESG in its current Nigerian incarnation is largely a document, a website section, a slide in the investor presentation. It is the language spoken to Bloomberg terminals and international development finance institutions. It is emphatically not a culture that reaches down into the facilities management department of most organization and asks the question: where exactly does our sewage go? The gap between the glossy ESG report and the unlicensed sewage pipe is not simply hypocrisy. It is a systems failure — a failure of internal governance, of facility management accountability, of the kind of routine environmental compliance audit that any institution serious about its own stated values would conduct as a matter of course.

 What the corporate closure demonstrates — and why citizens should be happy about is that environmental enforcement does not have to be a tool used only against those too poor or too powerless to fight back. The law, applied uniformly, is a powerful equaliser. The different write up, opinion and comments on social media by citizens who justify the lack of sewage system in Lagos has a justification for organization to discharge untreated sewage into public drain shows the lack of basic environmental education and knowledge about regulation guiding sewage treatment in Lagos. The Lagos State Environmental Management and Protection Law of 2017, and the NESREA Act of 2007, are not ambiguous on the question of sewage disposal. They establish clear standards for wastewater treatment, prohibit the discharge of untreated sewage into drainage systems or water bodies, and empower agencies of government to inspect, issue compliance notices, and close down violating premises. The penalties provided under these laws are substantial. Fines can be imposed so also directors and facility managers can, in principle, face personal criminal liability for environmental offences committed by corporate entities.

 So for keypad warriors who wants to justify lack of infrastructure for the basis of their payer’s violation? The law may be unfair and violators end up in prison basically for environmental violation. In practice, penalties have historically been negotiated down, closures have been brief, and prosecutions have been vanishingly rare. This case gives an opportunity not just to fine an institution and reopen its doors — but to establish a precedent: that large-scale violators face large-scale consequences, that remediation orders are enforced, that repeat violations are treated as aggravated offences, and that the personal liability of executives and directors is not merely theoretical.

In going forward, when a corporate organisation commits an offence, the Facility manager responsible for the sewage system and the senior executive with operational oversight responsibility should be named, cautioned, and required to appear before environmental regulators. Corporate accountability without personal accountability is a half-measure that the elite is exceptionally skilled at surviving. The question now is whether every corporate organization will treat this incident as the embarrassment to be managed, or the wake-up call to be heeded. Whether sustainability commitments will be revised from the top of the ESG report down to the basement of facilities management department. Whether every corporate organization that talks about environmental stewardship in its annual report will ensure that the actual physical environment in and around its operations meets the standards it publicly claims to champion. This is same to every corporate headquarters, luxury hotel, shopping mall, and high-rise residential development in Lagos. Lagos action to corporate closure should be a mirror — uncomfortable, clarifying — held up to every facility manager who has taken a shortcut, every compliance officer who has looked the other way, and every executive who has assumed that the rules governing where sewage goes were someone else's problem.

There is a version of Lagos achievable, necessary and urgent in which the law applies equally to every corporate organization and to the roadside food vendor. In which the penalty for polluting the Lagos Lagoon is the same whether the polluter is a factory in Mushin or a glass tower in Marina. In which the elite cannot buy its way out of the basic obligations of urban citizenship. That version of Lagos requires exactly the kind of enforcement action that was taken here — applied consistently, transparently, and without deference to the size of the violator's balance sheet or the length of corporate image.  The closure of a corporate organization for sewage disposal is not, in the end, a story about one organization. It is a stress test of a principle: that environmental law in Lagos means what it says, for everyone, at every address.

The lagoon does not care about your ESG report. It cannot be impressed by your sustainability committee. It is simply a body of water, shared by 23 million people, receiving what is poured into it — and responding, inevitably, with the only answer nature knows: consequence. By fostering a culture of responsibility and sustainable practices, the elite can play a pivotal role in protecting the environment and ensuring the well-being of local communities. Moving forward, it is essential that all stakeholders prioritize environmental stewardship to create a healthier and more sustainable future for all.

For keypad warriors when the law reaches upward instead of downward, when accountability lands not on the roadside hawker or the Agege mechanic, but on the gleaming glass tower of corporate power government should be commended not criticized. Let Lagos breath.

 “Èkó ò gba gbẹ̀gẹ̀.” (Lagos does not tolerate nonsense).