A five-month-old baby girl and her mother have been rescued from a canal at Abule-Ado along the Lagos-Badagry Expressway by operatives of the Lagos State Environmental Sanitation Corps, popularly known as KAI.
The rescue was carried out on Wednesday, August 26, 2026, during routine clearance operations in the Abule-Ado area, according to the agency’s spokesperson, Lukman Ajayi, who confirmed the incident in a telephone conversation with PUNCH Metro.
Ajayi said the operatives found the mother and her child in the canal and immediately intervened after observing that the five-month-old girl was in poor health.
He said, “Today, our operatives rescued a mother and her five-month-old baby girl from a canal at Abule-Ado during routine clearance operations on the Lagos-Badagry Expressway.”
According to him, the mother could not satisfactorily explain why she and her child were in the canal, but said she was running away from her husband, who lived in FESTAC.
“Both the mother and the child have been taken to the hospital. The child was not in a good state of health when they were rescued,” Ajayi said.
The latest rescue comes about two weeks after KAI operatives rescued four nursing mothers and their babies from an illegal dumpsite at Agboju, also along the Lagos-Badagry Expressway.
In that earlier incident, reported on August 12, one of the rescued babies was nine days old and was found in an environment characterised by filth, poor air quality and inadequate access to basic necessities.
The repeated rescues have raised concerns about the vulnerability of mothers and young children seeking refuge or living in unsafe environments along the expressway, highlighting the need for stronger coordination between environmental enforcement and social welfare agencies to provide vulnerable families with healthcare, shelter and other necessary support.
