Sorrow & Tears as Lagos Govt. Demolishes Local Community, Evicting Residents (Photos)

 

A slum community in Lagos, Badia East community, is looking like it had been ravaged by hurricane. On Thursday, September 24, residents were pictured wearing 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 2:00 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.

 

 

A grocery shop owner in the community, Bukola Ojuri, said she lost everything she owned and that the dress she had on was the only possession she was able to salvage from her home.

 

 

 

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. "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.

 

Credits: Premium Times