Piles of garbage covered the Surulere section of Lagos, Nigeria, after heavy rains struck on Saturday.

Some residents are blaming poor drainage and lack of government action for the mess, while others blame the residents for years of littering.

Last year, the International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR) found debris and garbage throughout Surulere's water channels, a problem that plagues much of Lagos. That problem gets worse when heavy rain and flooding occurs and washes the waste into the roads.

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Residents told ICIR that Visionscape, the state's waste management agency, either does not get to their neighborhood to remove waste or is no longer active in their area, and tends mostly to the busier roads in the municipality, ignoring sidestreets. In a report by The Guardian, residents said that their waste is not picked up by waste management if they're overdue on bills, a problem many locals are facing.

Some people resort to paying truck pushers to dump their garbage illegally in unauthorized locations.

Lagos' litter problem is not new. It was once considered one of the dirtiest cities in the world. Cleanliness was looking up until the last state administration cancelled monthly environmental sanitation.

Lagos produces over 12,000 metric tons of waste daily. According to the World Health Organization, over 2.4 billion people could be at risk of potentially fatal diseases if waste disposal issues continue as they are in Lagos.

Two days before the downpour washed tons of trash into the street, Lagos State Waste Management Authority announced its plans to increase its solid waste evacuation from tenements and commercial facilities to approved dumpsites from 500 trips daily to 850, and to focus on sustainability and recycling, All Africa reported.