Nigerian Police Force officer rides on excavator on morning of 19 Sept 2015
The atmosphere at Badia East, a slum
community in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, on Thursday, September
24, the day of the 2015 Muslim Eid-el-Kabir festival, was anything but
celebratory.
The community looked like it had been
ravaged by hurricane. People wore long and sullen faces as they cuddled
under whatever makeshift structure they could build from the rubble of
their homes that were demolished a week before.
Stripped of their dignity and
possessions, families gathered in small groups in the open looking
dejected. A woman was taking her bath in the open, a piece of cloth tied
to two sticks barely hiding her nakedness from the public. A young man,
who probably hadn’t got much sleep for quite for a week, slept on a
bench with corrugated iron sheet delicately placed over his head
shielding him from the daylight. A few metres away, four kids were
playing with rocks beneath what look like a recharge card kiosk. A woman
who sat beside them said that was where they had been sleeping since
their parents were forcefully evicted and their home demolished.
Members of the community narrated that
on September 17, 2015, representatives of the Oba of Ojoraland, Abdul
Fatai Aromire, posted notices of possession of the land backed by a
judgement of a Lagos State High Court. They claimed that no notice of
eviction was served on them.
They said bulldozers arrived the
community in the dead of the night, around 2 am, and started pulling
down homes. People were not even allowed to take their personal
belongings. Many shops were pulled down with the wares inside them.
Bukola Ojuri, who owned a grocery shop
in the community, said she lost everything she owned. Speaking with a
clear bitter tinge in her voice, Mrs. Ojuri said the dress she had on
was the only possession she was able to salvage from her home.
“They have destroyed everything along
with the house because that day when they came around 2:00am in the
morning with caterpillar,” she said. “When we saw them, ask them if they
came to demolish our houses. They deceived us and said they were not
coming to demolish houses. They said caterpillar wanted to pack the
gutter. I went out and that was when people at home called me that they
were already demolishing the house. Before I got there, they were
already moving to the next house and I begged them to allow me take even
a bag out of my house, I pleaded with them, They forbidded me from
entering my house so I left them.”
Joel Oko said he had a thriving guest
house and barber shop before the demolition exercise. He said he and his
two kids now live outside with nowhere to call home.
“We just saw them one morning. They
started demolishing with no notice. I am helpless. I don’t know what to
do. The government should come to our aid,” he said.
Olabisi Malomo, a mother of six, lived
in the community for 25 years. She also lost all her possessions to the
demolition and now sleeps in the open with her children. She said
Thursday evening was particularly difficult for her suffering family as
it rained heavily all night and she and her children had little or no
protection from the rain.
“I am sleeping outside with my six
children. As rain is falling now, we are under the rain. The way they do
us for this community, it’s not good. In this Nigeria, they treat we
poor people like we’re goats. We aren’t goats; we are human beings. They
should help us. We have suffered too much,” she said.
There was no cheerful story to tell. It
was all gloom and grim. Worse, for many of the estimated 15,000
displaced people it was like reliving a nightmare.
In 2013, the Lagos State government
demolished a section of the community to make way for the Home Ownership
Mortgage Scheme (HOMS). More than 9,000 people were displaced in the
process. The intention of the state government was to demolish the
entire community at the time, but widespread local and international
condemnation of the shamed the state and compelled it to halt the
exercise.
Although this current eviction is being
done by the Ojora Chieftaincy family, which is laying claim to the land,
residents of Badia East believe it is the Lagos State government that
is using the family as a cover to continue what it suspended in 2013.
They suspected the Ojora family plans to
hand over the land to the state government to continue its mortgage
scheme as soon as they are evicted.
“I am saying it that Lagos state was
just using Ojora as a cover up,” said Emmanuel Ojuri, a victim of the
demolition. “Lagos state is trying to play hanky-panky. We understand
that Ijora has ceded that parcel of land to Lagos State. I know Ojora
has collected lots of money, that is why. Even the caterpillar
(bulldozer) they used, it is Lagos State Carterpillar, it is not Ijora
own. Ijora does not have bulldozer.”
Mr Ojuri, as well as several other
residents of the community, alleged that an official of the Lagos State
Physical Planning and Development Authority (LSPPDA), Tunde Olugbewesa,
was seen supervising the demolition.
That was a concern everyone in the
community expressed. After the evictees protested in front of the
Governor’s Ofice on September 21, the government ordered a temporary
stop to the demolition but the people still live in horrid fear that the
bulldozer might start pulling down homes again.
However, Oba Aromire, the traditional
leader of Ijora, said his family was merely taking possession of what
belonged to it and was not evicting people on behalf of the Lagos State
government.
In a telephone interview with PREMIUM
TIMES, he said Badia East had remained a “den of criminals” and that by
taking possession of the land, the family would be helping to rid the
surrounding communities of crime.
He declined to speak further on the
matter when we visited him last Thursday. But added that some members of
the community had written him a “letter of apology” .
He promised to call a press conference where he would further state his family’s side of the story.
Although the Lagos State government denied it has anything to do with the demolition, it promised to help resolve the matter in such a way that all parties involved would be happy and satisfied.
Although the Lagos State government denied it has anything to do with the demolition, it promised to help resolve the matter in such a way that all parties involved would be happy and satisfied.
A meeting between representatives of the
community and the Ojora family has been fixed for Friday at the state
government’s secretariat in Alausa.
Members of the community said they have
lived in the area for over 40 years and cannot be treated like
squatters. They said the state government should relocate them to a new
place and pay compensation for their properties destroyed by the
bulldozer.
“In any civilized country if you are
displacing us you must create where we will stay. Almost on two to three
occasions, Lagos state has been on our lands but what do we get? Even
when Amnesty international and all that say you must compensate these
people, you must give these people something, they did not give us
anything,” said Mr Ojuri.
Demolition after demolitions
Residents of Badia have for long being
on the receiving end of demolitions. In 1929, the federal government
acquired a huge chunk of their land to build a railway.
By the early
1970s, the federal government called again, this time displacing
occupants at a location nearby where the National Theatre was built.
However, the people were moved to Badia-East, some hundreds of metres
away, where they continued to live until Lagos State began its forced
evictions.
There were also half-hearted attempts at
eviction in 1986 and 2002.
But it was in 2003 that the community
experienced its first real taste of government bulldozers as Bola
Tinubu, the then governor of Lagos, rolled in equipment to demolish a
part of the community.
However the one that happened 10 years later, in 2013, was on a scale never seen before by the people.
Witnesses recall how bulldozers,
accompanied by fully armed police officers, stormed the community around
7 am that Saturday, February 23, 2013. They spoke of how residents were
given just 20 minutes to park their belongings before the demolition
started.
Some people, according to one of the
affected residents, John Momoh, were able to pack some of their
belongings. Others were not so lucky. Their stuffs were destroyed along
with the demolished residences.
Once the demolition started, residents were not allowed to come near what were their homes for years.
At the end of the exercise, about 9,000
people were rendered homeless, according to Amnesty International, as
bulldozers and backhoes pulled apart wooden homes erected on swampy
grounds in the slum.
Forty-eight hours after the demolition,
Felix Morka, a human rights lawyer, led hundreds of the community people
in a peaceful protest march in front of the governor’s office in Lagos.
Mr. Morka also galvanized both the local and international media to
beam their attention on the plight of a people rendered homeless by an
elected government.
PREMIUM TIMES learnt that Badia was
chosen as part of the urban renewal zone project alongside eight other
slums selected for the 200 million U.S. dollars World Bank credit
facility project, implemented by the Lagos Metropolitan Development and
Governance Project. The project was designed to provide essential
services and infrastructures in slum communities in Lagos.
The Lagos government has however
maintained that the demolition was not related to the World Bank
project. The government maintained the Badia residents were illegal
occupants who were simply made to vacate government land.
Lagos, the demolition master
Most of the victims of the 2013
demolition have moved on to find homes in other slums or locations
around and outside Lagos. Some have moved in with relatives. A few,
PREMIUM TIMES was told, remain homeless.
For several months, arguments and
counter-arguments lingered between the community and the Lagos State
government over whether the residents were eligible for compensation or
government-assisted relocation.
While the community’s lawyers argued
that Ijora Badia residents should be compensated, the government
insisted they were illegal occupants of its land who did not deserve any
assistance. The government maintained that the demolition was not
related to the World Bank project.
But after a series of meetings between
the Badia community representatives and a technical committee of the
Lagos State government, a Resettlement Action Plan, RAP, that included a
compensation package was reached for those affected by the demolition.
The figures paid to the evictees were
arrived at after a unilateral decision by the Lagos State government to
review downwards an initial figure agreed by both parties
.
The details of the package in the RAP
included: N90,400 for tenants; N171,725 for owners of small structures
(1 – 4 rooms) ; N248,740 for owners of medium structures (5 – 8 rooms);
and N309,780 for owners of large structures (8 rooms and above).
The World Bank monitored and approved
the RAP, despite it falling short of international human rights standard
and the Bank’s resettlement policy.
Almost all the affected residents appear
to have now been paid. All those interviewed by PREMIUM TIMES lamented
that the money paid to them was meager and would do little to provide
succor. They however said they agreed to accept the compensation because
they ran out of patience after waiting for over a year.
“Normally we are supposed to reject
that, but because our people are dying and we cannot cope anymore,” said
Albert Olorunwa, a community representative.
The Lagos government has a history of
forcefully and brutally demolishing homes and businesses, with little or
no warning, no compensation and no resettlement – purportedly in
enforcement of the state’s environmental laws.
According to the Social and Economic
Rights Action, an NGO documenting these practices, countless Lagos
communities have experienced such horror – from Ijora Badia in 2003 and
again in February 2013 to Makoko in 2005 and 2010 – and thousands of
Lagosians have been left homeless and further impoverished as a
consequence.
A call for Buhari’s intervention
A coalition of non-governmental
organisations and individuals, known as Friends of Badia East, in a
press statement on Sunday, called on the Ojora family and the Lagos
state government to stop further demolition of homes in the community.
“We join the victims in calling for the
Ojora Chieftaincy Family and the Lagos State Government to put a final
halt to these demolitions,” the group said. “We implore urgent
protective action for the victims by the Lagos State Government and the
Federal Government, both of which have the legal responsibility of
preventing forced evictions, protecting victims, and ensuring effective
remedy.
“At a United Nations summit just days
ago, President Buhari publicly committed Nigeria to the 2030 Sustainable
Development Agenda, which sets goals for eradication of poverty and
rights-based upgrading of slums. It is high time for such commitments to
be felt in places like Badia, the statement read.
The group, therefore, made the following demands:
– That the Federal Government of
Nigerian and the Lagos State Government take all necessary steps to
ensure there are no further forced evictions;
– That people already forcibly evicted
be returned to their rebuilt homes, or provided an adequate and
satisfactory alternative, and compensated for all their losses; and
– That persons rendered homeless,
especially women, children and other vulnerable populations, be given
immediate humanitarian assistance, including adequate temporary shelter
while long-term solutions are in process.
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