IMPORTANT NOTICE

Twenty years after the infamous demolition of homes (shanties) in Maroko, the government is still pursuing this means of displacement. In a recent news report, the Lagos State Government had demolished shanties along the Okunde Blue Water Scheme II in Lekki, displacing no fewer than 1000 persons in the process. The evictees watched as their properties were crushed by operatives of the Task Force on the Environment in the early hours as they set out for the day's activities.  In a related development, the Lagos State Government had ordered all squatters living in illegal structures and shanties within the Abattoir and Lairage Complex in Oko-Oba to quit or risk being dislodged. According to Chief Enoch Ajiboso, the State Commissioner for Agriculture and Cooperatives, the present administration in the state is committed to improve infrastructures throughout the state and as such would not allow the growth of slums in the state.

Ordinarily, these squatters did not envisage living in shanties configured with corrugated aluminium and nylon sheets with no running water, sewage system or electricity. In the case of the Okunde Blue Water Scheme, the refusal of property owners to develop their fallow lands gave occasion for these squatters. I have not seen a squatter who goes to live in a place where someone else is resident. One of the evicted squatters, Miss Aminat Mohammed, a twenty-five year old Ghanaian who sells used clothes could afford to rent a house in some other place, but the Blue Water shanty in Lekki, according to her, is closer to her place of work. Of course, there is no efficient transport link in the state, so she doesn't mind to expose herself to the elements just to make sure her business thrives. She even pays ground rent to somebody who keeps a routine check on the area, before she can set up her aluminium-and-nylon shelter.

Some people call this place home

The housing problem in Lagos could turn out to be the clog in the wheel of any effort to achieving the demands of a mega-city. Nature abhors a vacuum, and as long as people remain homeless, they will take up any available piece of undeveloped land some of these people who live in the high end shanties of Ikoyi, Lekki and Victoria Island are gainfully employed after all. They just need a place to lay their heads at night, when they return from work.  They could use any of the government housing schemes in the Lekki Peninsular, but affordability is a long way off. A plot of land in two of such housing schemes, the Abijo GRA and the Oko Orisan Waterfront costs N7.4 million and N3.3 million respectively. It goes without saying that this kind of housing initiative is a far cry from what is actually needed to stop shanties and slums from springing up in every available space in the urban centre. Something more creative is desperately needed to address the housing problems in the state, or else the wild-goose enterprise of chasing squatters all over the place will continue.

Good news, bad news?
I had just finished my piece on shanty destruction when I came across this piece in Thisday of July 22, 2010. Apparently, the Lagos State Government has 'slum upgrade' as a vital strategy to realise the state's goal of a mega-city. Speaking at a forum with Local Government Chairmen , a consultant to the Public Service Staff Development Centre (PSSDC) was quoted as saying that slum upgrade “is an essential part of the State's Millennium Development Goals and there was a programme to bring relief to no fewer than 100,000 residents living in slums and shanties. Another member of the PSSDC identified 200 slums in Lagos State.

My problem now is what is a “slum upgrade”? Is it a removal of the slum (and its residents) or finding ways of improving the standard of living in those places as well as seeking property rights for the residents? We will all see, soon!