The Problem of Lagos State

By Richard Odilu

‘On the 17^th of August 2008 … I just saw these armed forces, they started marking the houses in red paints, and I interrogated … They said they were told to mark it and everybody should vacate there’ the elderly man garbed in a brown traditional attire who had introduced himself as Evangelist Emiko Ayeni told the participants at the round table discussion on the topic: ‘Sustainability of Coastal Environments: The Uncertainties and Risks of Infrastructural Developments’

For close to four minutes he told the participants that included the Lagos State Commissioner for Waterfront Development and Infrastructure, Environmental Activists, Oceanographers, Observers, Bloggers, Journalists and International Bodies of how he had found himself as one of the inhabitants of the waterfront community in Victoria Island after his retirement, lived  and fished there for many years, and how the forceful eviction had seen them loose their tenancy, properties, including their cars that were set ablaze and even lives.

From where I sat at the venue, the conference hall of the Nigerian Institute for Oceanography and Marine Research, I could feel his pains as he remembered the past, the bitter memory of loosing all he had in the blink of an eye, and the homeless status that followed. When the moderator asked where they, the evicted inhabitants of the coastal communities lived at the moment, he replied that most of them lived under the umbrellas at the bar beach, while others roamed the streets.  

The Commissioner reacted saying that the man’s claim about being evicted with no prior notice wasn’t true, aside that part ownership of the said land belongs to the government,  that the occupants had been asked to vacate the place years before now, and that the government had seized the fire outbreak occurrence to evict them as the living condition there was deplorable which he connoted with the word ‘shanty’, also, that if  Evangelist Ayeni could produce any documentation of certificate of occupancy about their illegal eviction he will assure that they will be returned back to the land. This bring to fore the issue of relocation.

When you suddenly tell a man to vacate a place he has come to identify as his home overtime like the scenario above, without giving him an alternative accommodation, or that for his safety he had to vacate a residence to which his livelihood is tied to due to a man-made disaster, like the Kuramo Beach ocean surge last month, without finding a back-up for him, you end up creating a problem. You don’t solve a problem by creating a bigger one.

I don’t need to spell it out here the social problems that could stem from the destitute situation caused by these forceful evictions.

Well, forceful evictions are not new in Nigeria, the military era being the harbinger of such illegal and inhumane act with reference point to the Maroko eviction of 1990. We have witnessed several of such evictions in the post-military era, e.g. the Makoko eviction of August 03, 2012, and it is always the downtrodden and those at the lowest part of the social ladder that are always affected. The same people who had voted for a government they had hope will help make life easy and alleviate them of their problems now being made to believe that they are the problem that should be taken care of.

I understand that the Lagos State Government has plans to turn Lagos into a wonder city but it appears that poor people and those who live in poverty stricken areas will have to pay the ultimate price for that dream to come true.