It is a Sunday morning showing life in its little, happy details. But beneath that seeming stability is fear and despair. A quit notice is two weeks behind schedule and the bulldozers are surely coming. They will rip lives apart, delivering the sentence of mindless power to those who, for being poor and powerless, have been found guilty.
In the pits of Ijora lies Badia-East, a slum overlooking a rusty railway track running through Apapa local government of Lagos. Although a swamp, it is home to thousands ripped away from regular city life, their impoverished homesteads awaiting the verdict of the bulldozer. Men, women, and children liable to plunder for the ‘felony’ of leading an abject existence.
A footbridge with beaten pieces of wood that droop with every step leads to Badia. Beneath is dingy water, feeding grasses mangled by refuse. Children play giddily along the precarious bridge, unfazed by its potential danger. Dirt, stench, loud music, people — it is a violent marriage of life and dystopia.
“Everyone is smoking”, I tell my guide, Moses Ilawole, scrunching my nose to the smell of weed, wondering if crime is responsible for government’s fixation with demolishing Badia. “We protect the community to prevent and fight crime. We watch each other’s back,” he assures. Ilawole says government has no real reason for the demolitions except to rid the area of poor people and take the land. “They’re not using the place to do anything. They just demolish, go, return again and demolish”.
Previous demolitions were announced often by invasive bulldozers with no prior notice, crushing homes. Recently, however, some persons purported to have come from the popular Ojora family, part claimants to the land, brought a quit notice that elapsed last month. Makanjuola Idowu, a leader in the community, says the people have been hoping for mercy since the expiration of the notice. “I am tired! They have been chasing us about. This time I have nowhere else to go.” The notice is emanating from City Pharmaceuticals, a company linked to the Ojora family and planning to site a factory on the land. Laying claims to the land, besides the said family, include the state and federal government — and of course the harassed residents who have official documents authorising their stay.
Asked if politicians representing the area show any concern, Idowu says, “they come during elections, share money for votes and never return. We keep hoping they will keep to their promises. We still vote for them anyway because we have no choice and people are hungry, in need of hope.”
Many children attend no schools and the youth, cut off from productive humanity and hope, appear menacing. Badia is peopled by citizens who pay dearly for refusing to just die off. The revolt may be exported to other parts of the State in criminal activities.
Strewn around are pieces of wood from the last demolition just months ago, relics of shanties that used to be homes. Some surviving shacks, suspended above putrid swamp water, stand precariously, as if with bated breath. They are covered with torn tarpaulins, nylon sheets, and wrappers. Yet despite the misery of these habitations, they remain privileged possessions envied by many who sleep out there in the open.
“Even sef not everybody fit rent this kain house”, says food vendor Mrs. Sehinde, pointing at some young men lying on the wet ground nearby. “For night, them de cover theirself with nylon. If e rain, the water de reach here”, she adds, gesturing across her breasts. During the rains, those in the shanties buy empty crates of beer to elevate useful property, as floods reach knee-level in their rooms.
“When we gather, they scatter”
But Badia is also a springboard for dreams and hopes. My guide, young Ilawole, is a blogger hoping for a career in the public service. From food vending in Badia, Mrs. Sehinde is training a daughter in the university. “In London sef, there is ghetto. We stay here to raise money because all of us kuku wan’ comot. But when we gather (money), they scatter”, she laments, referring to the government and the private land owners authorising the recurrent demolitions. During the last exercise, she suffered a miscarriage from the shock.
From Spaces for Change, a Lagos rights advocacy group, comes tireless interventions. The NGO provides free legal services to the evictees, holding government and its private collaborator, the Ojora family, to task on their violation of the World Bank’s operational guidelines on development-induced displacement. With neither proper notices nor compensations, the government periodically renders the inhabitants homeless. The group’s recent report on Public-Private Connection in Urban Displacement reveals that “the Lagos State government and the Ojora family are the primary beneficiaries of the successive demolitions in Badia-East, which paved the way for the construction of the Jubilee Housing Estate.”
Ilawole leads me down the slum where new shanties have been erected by some of the people affected by the last eviction… They open their “rooms” inviting me to take photos, in case the story needs to be soaked in utter shame to reach credibility.
The Estate had risen from the wreckage of a 2013 demolition carried out by the State Government. Purported as a low-cost resettlement for the evictees, it was reportedly staked at N5 million per self-contained unit, payable in what seemed like convenient installments. But by 2017 when the project was ready, the deceit was unraveled: said unit was priced at N22 million, eclipsing all hope for its intended occupants, except that it was clearly a land-grabbing gimmick from the start.
“We’re used to misery”
Ilawole leads me down the slum where new shanties have been erected by some of the people affected by the last eviction. Scraps, sticks, and junk shabbily stapled to form what looked like chicken roosts, stand for homes. Some are inhabited by young men who seem inspired by my presence, by interviews and cameras and all such performances of hope-bestowing officialdom. They open their “rooms” inviting me to take photos, in case the story needs to be soaked in utter shame to reach credibility. “We’re used to it”, one says, responding to my inquiry about mosquitoes. “No be that wan person de talk again.”
Amid the neglect, Badia is bursting with a young population, a lot of them settlers from evictions in other parts of Lagos. Save for petty trades and lotto, the economy is barren, although many work outside the community as conductors, construction workers, artisans, etc. Many children attend no schools and the youth, cut off from productive humanity and hope, appear menacing. Badia is peopled by citizens who pay dearly for refusing to just die off. The revolt may be exported to other parts of the State in criminal activities.
We take our leave through a footbridge leading to the west — through further decay and heartbreak. More shanties, more refuse, more kids. A mother is bathing her little girl. Squatting on a board connecting their shack to the bridge, little girl keeps patting on the water in a bowl, interrupting the adult hand scooping it to wash her. The bathwater is draining into the smelly grime below. Female neighbours plaiting hair, men playing draughts, a girl having a happy bath. It is a Sunday morning showing life in its little, happy details. But beneath that seeming stability is fear and despair. A quit notice is two weeks behind schedule and the bulldozers are surely coming. They will rip lives apart, delivering the sentence of mindless power to those who, for being poor and powerless, have been found guilty.
Immanuel James Ibe-Anyanwu is a freelance writer based in Lagos.
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