Somto Bisina
The Lagos State Environmental Protection Agency (LASEPA) has shut down a popular nightclub, Quilox, on Ozumba Nbadwe Street, Victoria Island, for holding an event without a sound control permit.
According to a statement on Sunday, the enforcement exercise, which was jointly carried out by LASEPA and the Lagos State Environmental and Special Offences Unit (task force), took place around 4 pm.
Join our WhatsApp ChannelGeneral Manager, LASEPA, Dolapo Fasawe, said the agency received several distress calls with multiple video evidence, from the club’s disturbed neighboring occupants on the alleged environmental nuisance constituted by the club.
Fasawe said, “To avert situations like this, we recently held a stakeholders’ parley with the owners and chief executive officers of nightclubs in the state to address the issue of noise pollution during the festive period. The state, in its magnanimity, compassionately increased the decibels to accommodate leisure and hospitality business interests.
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“We urged them to apply for sound control permits to enable us to reach out and notify the host community of the intended program and further deploy our officials to the venue for proper monitoring and prevention of excessive noise pollution.”
Fasawe noted that an invitation was extended to Quilox, like every other stakeholder, which was ignored by the club.
“Entertainment and Lagos are like a conjoined twin, thus our prolific intervention to preserve the sanctity of the state and at the same time sustain its economic relevance through aggressive environmental sustainability drive”.
“To support the entrepreneurship interest of the operators, we had an agreement at the stakeholder’s parley, came up with a communique which serves as a bond guiding all parties on the mode of operations during the yuletide period and consequences inherent in non-compliance to an environmental mutual agreement, ” Fasawe said.
Quilox is owned by the lawmaker representing Iseyin/Itesiwaju/Kajola/Iwajowa Federal Constituency, Oyo State, Shina Peller.
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Recall that a similar incident occurred in December 2019, the club was similarly sealed by LASEPA over noise pollution and traffic congestion. The incident generated controversy after Peller was also arrested by the police over the incident.
The lawmaker did not take his call or respond to a message on his WhatsApp on the latest incident as of press time.
