Lagos Government Demolishing Communities and Evicting Residents in the Face of a Housing Crisis
Lagos has a significant housing deficit, with an estimated shortage of over 3 million homes. Expectedly, the low-income earners are hit the hardest. Homeownership and renting decent accommodation have become exorbitantly expensive, making it difficult for moderate and low-income earners to find affordable housing. This forces many residents to live in informal settlements or slums, such as Makoko, which lack basic amenities like clean water and sanitation. These areas are often overcrowded and unsafe.
By Gideon Adeyeni
Despite the alarming housing situation in the state, the state government’s response has been the demolition of communities even as it invests too little in the sector. In 2022, Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, expressed the government’s desire to deliver at least 20,000 “affordable housing” units in the state by May 2023. This, obviously, is far from what is needed to cover the 3 million estimated housing shortage in the state. The popular mass housing schemes in Lagos today are those built by Lateef Jakande between 1979 and 1983. Rather than ensuring adequate budgetary allocation to cover this deficit, the government has been romancing private builders and projecting funding from “investors” as the sustainable pathway to end the state’s housing crisis. This reflects the neoliberal doctrine of the government, which essentially provides that private investment in basic services is sufficient and it is all that is needed in the provision of these services.
From Otodo Gbame to Mosafejo, demolition of communities of low-income households is a very familiar occurrence in Lagos, Nigeria, and it is not new. Instead of investing in mass housing schemes to resettle residents within the informal settlements which accommodates an estimated 60% to 70% of the state residents, the government in collaboration with some private entities is building a highly priced “commerce city” on reclaimed land from the Atlantic Ocean. Towards the development of Eko Atlantic City, some 80,000 people were evicted with their communities demolished around Victoria Island and Bar Beach area. The project is obviously not to provide housing for the poor and marginalized members of the city, but to provide luxury experiences to a few elites and huge returns for the profiteers who invested in it. This shows very clear the direction of the government’s housing and development policies, which are obviously anti-poor and generally anti-people.
The experience of forced eviction and demolition has wrecked many households and devastated some communities in the state. Too often, one hears stories of residents whose communities was razed by government officials, forcing residents to scamper for safety, before whatever that is left is cleared to pave way for the high-class buildings which the original residents of the demolished communities cannot have access to.
Some residents have experienced more than one such demolition and eviction, stranded on the streets for weeks and months, exposed to harsh weather conditions and threats from some individuals who have taken to desperate means to survive. Forced eviction has often meant stoppage of school for children and loss of jobs for parents, especially those from fishing communities whose living spaces serve as fish storage and processing area. It does not matter as far as the Lagos State government is concerned that many of the victims of the forced eviction and demolition are children. Evictions like these often directly translate to losing access to clean water, sanitation and healthcare, while also resulting in serious health conditions and even loss of lives among displaced residents.
The ruthless manner with which communities are forcefully evicted in Lagos, with the razing of buildings, with often short or no notice given, leading to loss of lives and livelihoods, is barbaric, and it exposes government officials’ blatant disregard for lives and wellbeing of ordinary people.
This experience is worsened by the harsh economic realities that have followed the unleashing of neoliberal economic policies of hike in fuel price, education commercialization and privatization, naira devaluation, among others. With the cost-of-living crisis in Nigeria, demolition and forced eviction results in double jeopardy for the households affected.
The state government gives a plethora of excuses for the demolitions. Communities have been demolished ‘out of concern for the safety of the residents’, climate change and increasing water levels, communities serving as hideouts for criminals, need of land space for infrastructure development, resident’s lack of titles to land, et cetera. While the government excuses its own irresponsibility and instead blame the poor residents, even though they have been occupying these areas for many decades, sufficient evidence shows that there is a serious housing crisis in the city and this is largely due to lack of sufficient investment in housing provision by the government. What the government fails to honestly acknowledge is the fact that the poor living conditions in the said informal settlement where government carries its callous eviction and demolition excises were neglected for many decades without the provision of relevant infrastructure because they are occupied by the poor.
Linked to the demolitions and forced evictions also is the corruption associated with land administration in the state. Many residents in the low-income communities are made to believe that payment of land use charge confers some legitimacy on their ownership title after they have acquired the land from those who traditionally claim ownership to the land – based on inheritance. This also exposes the low level of community engagement in land administration in the state.
Rather than demolish communities and displacing residents, the government must be forced, through a mass campaign of labour, communities and civil society organisations, to embrace alternative approaches which would improve living conditions and empower communities. Such approaches upgrade the settlement through the provision of new and improvement of existing infrastructure, fosters community engagement, promotes incremental housing development, provides legal recognition and protection of land rights, and provides financial assistance – such as subsidies – for poor households. The current pro-rich capitalist government will surely not wilfully adopt such alternative approaches that benefit the poor.
The task today is to continue to build the working peoples movement to continue to resist attempt to colonize spaces for the rich and render the poor destitute and homeless, which is what the eviction and demolition exercises of the Lagos State government seek to achieve. The working people must continue to insist that government invest massively in housing provision, and adopt alternative strategies for slum upgrading – that will not lead to agony and misery for the poor residents of the city. Housing must be recognized correctly by the government as a right, and the requisite investment to fulfil this right must be made. Ultimately, the working people must struggle to build a movement that can install a socialist government that would recognize housing as a social good which no one should be deprived of, shut out profiteers from its provision, and maintains a public works department that is constantly on its toes to ensure that not a single person sleeps without a roof over their head.