Wednesday made the seventh night Mrs Salewa Ogunlesi, a widow, had slept in the cold with no roof over her head. Since the Lagos State Government demolished her four-bedroomed apartment in Oworonshoki, Ogunlesi, who works as a head teacher at a private primary school in Ojota said this was the much she could afford.
The house, which she said her late husband bought in the 80s, was part of the structures demolished in the area by the government.
Since Monday, six communities in Oworonshoki – Oke-Eri, Oluwaseyi, Community, Cornerstone, Ogo-Oluwa and others – housing several buildings were affected by the demolition undertaken by the state task force. It was learnt that there were no fewer than 7,000 buildings, all of which had become debris. This has led to many residents losing their belongings and homes.
During our correspondent’s visit to the area towards the evening of Wednesday, the distraught woman, who appeared to be in her 60s, sat on a stool outside a tent made with tarpaulin, covering her legs with a wrapper to ward off mosquitoes.
She said, “I am confused. I lost all my property in one day. I was in school for holiday when I was called by neighbours that the government had come with bulldozers to demolish my house.
“I have tenants in two of the rooms while my cousin lived in one. I renovated the house in 2021 with my savings to give it a facelift and I was planning to increase the rent by year end in view of current realities when this happened. I don’t know where to go.”
While her loss is tragic, she lamented that the government did not consult her or other landowners in the area before the demolition, a claim the government denied.
Also hit by the same fate was a middle-aged man, who simply introduced himself as one of the community leaders. He admitted to Sunday PUNCH that the government issued a seven-day eviction notice before the demolition, but that not everyone got the notice.
He added that his house, for which he recently paid land use charge, was also demolished. “I had a two-bedroomed flat and I am from Oworo, so the government cannot say I am a non-indigene,” he stated. “I was born here, and have lived here all my life. Why would government ask me to leave my ancestral land because they want to do one thing or the other? It is unfair.
“Why have they been collecting land use charges from me for years? Is it because our former Oba is late? Is that why they want to take advantage of me?”
He took our correspondent to what remained of where he used to call home. A neatly tiled floor was all that remained of the structure. The walls and roof members were gone, scattered across the premises.
Fighting back tears as he pointed at the rubble, he stated, “I have been squatting with a friend. They did not even allow us to pick anything. They were ruthless. We had only seven days to vacate. We will not let this one slide.”
Close to his former house was a family with four children, all of whom laid on a wrapper in the cold, while their parents chased mosquitoes with their hand fans. Time was almost 10.40pm as the cold breeze pampered the rubble.
Although the father declined to speak for fear of attack, his wife, who gave her name as Moyo Alabi, told our correspondent that they had nowhere to go.
Originally from Osun State, she said they had been living in the area since 2002, saying they had the approval to build their house.
“My husband used the money he was paid when he retired from the Nigeria Breweries to build the house,” she stated. “It took almost four years before we could complete it. Even after completing it, it took us another two years or thereabouts to properly furnish it even though we had moved in. We have not even enjoyed the house before this demolition.”
On whether she got an eviction notice from the government, she said her husband was told by some neighbours that the government wanted to use the land for something else. She said they also heard from another neighbour that their property was blocking the water channel and was prone to flooding.
“There was no official communication and that is very unfortunate,” she stressed. Where do we go from here? My first child is not even up to 15. Where does the government want us to pack these children to; to the government house or an orphanage home?”
Across the entire premises, parents, teenagers, young adults and other sympathisers formed clusters, reviewing their travails.
A mother-of-three, who gave her name as Omolara, also said she had nowhere to go. She stated, “I had just renewed my rent when this sad incident took place. My husband is in Kano and he was the one who rented this place for us since 2015. We renewed our rent last week after it had expired in June.
“The landlady is also sleeping outside like us. She also had nowhere to go. The government has turned us to destitute. We have become homeless in a twinkle of an eye. I can’t believe this.”
Shaking her head is distress as Omolara narrated her ordeal as a single mother, who refused to disclose her name.
She said she works with a microfinance bank and had gone to work on Monday when she was called from home that her house had been levelled to the ground.
“I rushed down from Ikosi only to meet the rubble and my belongings,” she said. I learnt that as the demolition was ongoing, people were looting properties. I had a subsisting rent, neither did the government give me a quit notice. Where does the government want my daughter and me to go?”
She argued that if the demolition notice was served three months earlier, she would have planned to move elsewhere. “I have no savings anywhere. How much is even my salary? I have no husband. This is insensitive,” she added.
As she rounded off, a young boy rushed to our correspondent to request for an interview with his family, who now live in an uncompleted building in the area.
In the building, which had no doors or windows, were about 15 families, all of whom were displaced. Learning to embrace their new reality, our correspondent learnt they take turns to use the makeshift toilet and bathroom they made while relying on luck and benevolence of people to feed.
One of the mothers, Mary Tunji, appealed to the government to come to her aid, saying she could not afford another home anytime soon. “I am poor. I have nobody. The government that is supposed to stand for me has rendered me homeless. I don’t know what to do,” she said.
The Shepherd of the Halleluiah Temple of God Apostolic Church, Oworonshoki, Pastor Segun Adesanya, who claimed to have bought the land for his church and home since 1990, said he did not get any notice from the government to vacate the property.
“I have been here since 1993. This is 30 years of my being here. I bought this place in 1990,” he said. “Nobody came here to trouble us. For the government to tell people that they had informed us. There was nothing like that. What we don’t know is whether the demolition was really ordered by the government, our new king or those who are richer than us. We don’t know.”
The pastor also said no one from the government, at any level, since the demolition began on Monday, had come to address them on the next step to take.
He added, “We have not heard from the councilor in charge of this community. The local government chairman has not come to speak to us. No one from the state has come to address us. The House of Representatives and senators are also silent. This is why we are suspicious. This is just pure government’s wickedness against the poor.”
He said the initial notice they received was that only wooden structures that had become a haven for criminals would be destroyed.
“You can imagine the shock on our faces when the bulldozers started demolishing well-built block structures, rendering people homeless and hopeless,” he said. “I have been paying land use charges since the time of former Governor Babatunde Fashola. It is paid once every year. The LGA used to give us a tenement rate before it was stopped.
He appealed to the government for help, saying they had been sleeping outside.
“When rain falls, it will meet us here. When the sun shines, it will also meet us here. I was lucky to have packed all my belongings. I kept them at my brother’s place. But I cannot live with him. He has a family as well and there is no space,” he added.
Although the Chief Press Secretary to Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, Mr Gbenga Akosile, said notices were sent to residents of the affected areas, it was unclear whether or not the demolition was to affect only the shanties or other residential buildings were included.
Akosile had said the state government was only removing shanties and criminal hideouts in the area.
He had said, “The state government did not demolish the homes of the people. What the state government did was to demolish shanties. When some of these people commit crimes, they run into that place for shelter. These were the structures that were demolished.
“The duty of the government is to ensure that we keep the people and the environment safe. The government will not just destroy people’s homes.”
The visit by revealed that the demolition affected residential buildings in the area.
The evicted residents had marched to the state House of Assembly complex in Alausa, Ikeja, a day before the demolition, to protest. They displayed placards bearing, ‘Say no to land grabbers and wrong demolition’; ‘Please help us in Oworonshoki’ and ‘We plead to the government to come to our rescue’.
The protesters, including women and children, rolled on the floor, begging the governor to intervene in the matter.
One of them, Serah Ogundimu, said her family, including three toddlers and her aged mother, had been sleeping outside after their house was demolished.
She stated, “One of us had four buildings here. We have all the papers. They demolished all four. Now, I don’t have anywhere to go. Sanwo-Olu should help us. We were not informed before they started demolishing our houses. We don’t know these people at all.
“I went to work. When I came back, I saw my house in ashes. This shirt I wear is what I have had on for three days now. All my brothers and sisters don’t have anywhere to go. All our belongings have been lost. Where do they want us to go? Where do we start from?
“Government should tell us where they want us to go. They have succeeded in rendering us homeless. We have been sleeping outside since our house was burnt. If it’s raining, we only cover ourselves with a canopy.”
Beyond losing their houses, some residents said they also lost their businesses.
A septuagenarian, known as Mama Alhaji, said her charcoal business had been destroyed as a result of the demolition.
The teary aged woman who claimed to have lived in the area for over 33 years said, “They (the government) came to this place without notice. My house was at number 32, Oke-Eri. They didn’t give us any notice. On Monday, we heard some houses were burnt around the riverbank.
“Not long after that, they came to Oke-Eri and demolished several buildings opposite mine. Then I started packing some of my belongings. Before I came back on Friday, my house and several bags of charcoal valued at over N60,000 had been burnt.”
A mother of five had told that half of her belongings were lost to the demolition, adding that her five children now take shelter at one of the nearby churches in the area.
The PUNCH also reported how a family of eight lost their four-bedroomed apartment, while a father, who gave his name only as Mr Akande, said the state government should have given adequate notice. He lamented that the task force used tear gas on residents and smashed mobile phones of those people recording how buildings went up in flames.
Building demolition is not a new phenomenon in Lagos State. In April, the government demolished 13 residential buildings in highbrow Rockview Street in Ajao Estate, saying the buildings were demolished because they were illegally constructed along fuel pipelines.
During a press briefing at the time, the General Manager, Lagos State Building Control Agency, Gbolahan Oki, noted that the houses, which were close to the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, did not have building permits. He said the situation was a disaster waiting to happen.
In Lagos alone, a tally done by Sunday PUNCH, which is from LASBCA data, showed that 323 illegal houses had been demolished by the state in 16 months, between January 2022 and April 2023.
In the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, it is not unusual to see bulldozers pulling down shanties or estates, especially when they contravene the ‘Abuja Master Plan’.
Among others, in July, the FCT Administration demolished houses and structures erected “illegally” in Gishiri community, Katampe district of the FCT.
Officials of the development control department of the FCTA, accompanied by joint security personnel, were said to have stormed the area that Monday morning with two bulldozers, which they use to pull down the structures.
FCTA’s Katampe and Mabushi district monitor, Samson Atureta, said the action was part of continued efforts to reclaim lands developed by illegal occupants. Over 100 buildings were said to have been destroyed.
Commenting on the incessant demolition in the FCT, the Chairman of the Institute of Town Planners, FCT Chapter, Lami Ayuba, said there was a lot of communication gap among stakeholders in the housing sector.
In an interview with Sunday PUNCH, she stated, “The planning, structures and development are for a new city. There is supposed to be a new structure for sustaining a growing city. So far, the indices used to plan Abuja as a capital city – population, land usage, density – need a new structure for sustaining the current growth.”
Speaking to the issue of demolition, the town planner stated that when people migrate to Abuja and there is no new development, they are left to rent or build homes or look for slum areas to build shanties.
She added, “Due to the cost of living, people prefer to live in shanties. This is because the categories of people that come into Abuja are civil servants, artisans or service providers like housemaids, drivers, and the likes. Those ones cannot afford to pay rent, and there is no provision for those kinds of people in the city.
“This is because it was planned to be an elitist city. Those shanties grow exponentially. A shanty can grow from 10 to 1000 in a space of one year. The control department needs to do more. They need to forecast development, project housing needs, check development needs and mitigate. It is not all about demolition. Their schedule for now is to allow, permit and react (demolish) whatever is against the Abuja Master Plan.”
Housing, like food and clothing, is one of the essential needs of people. However, the lack of housing is said to affect people’s health, safety and productivity, as well as their ability to access education and other essential services.
Nigeria has an estimated 28 million units of housing deficit, according to the Bank of Industry, noting that about N21tn was required to provide housing units to bridge the gap. This rising deficit has been tied to the rapid population growth, which has now led to overcrowded and obsolete houses as well as growing slums.
Analysis of the real estate sector investment shows the sector had an average annual investment of N7.47tn over the last 16 years.
This implies that it might take the country many years of investment to bridge the housing deficit.
A realtor, Adedamola Bello, in an article ‘The Housing Deficit in Nigeria and the need for affordable housing solutions’, which he published on LinkedIn in April noted that, in Nigeria, access to affordable housing has largely stayed a pipe dream for the vast majority, particularly the middle and lower classes which take about 80 per cent of the populace.”
Reports indicate that only about 10 per cent of those who want to own a home in Nigeria could afford it, either through purchase or personal construction, compared to 72 per cent in the United States, 78 per cent in the United Kingdom, 60 per cent in China, 54 per cent in South Korea, and 92 per cent in Singapore.
Bello added, “In Nigeria, household expenditures and rental payments are rising faster than overall inflation, and with inflation currently at an all-time high of 21.91 per cent, the overall cost of construction has increased sharply.
“The market’s composition of available homes for purchase and rental has been irreversibly moving towards expensive homes, which has only made matters worse. However, a significant portion of the population yearns for and seeks affordable housing, both for purchase and for rent, which is contrary to actuality.”
Despite these issues, real estate remains a significant contributor to Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product, accounting for approximately 10 per cent of the services sector and six per cent of overall GDP in 2022, according to official figures. It indicated that it is a growing and important sector in the economy.
While the growth is noticeable, it is believed that it is not necessarily solving the housing problem due to several factors, including the disproportionate increase in population, poor policies and lack of affordability.
Some experts told our correspondent that one of the solutions to the challenge would be the provision of affordable housing.
Bello added that there was a need for private sector participation to support the government.
The National President, Building Collapse Prevention Guild, Mr Sulaimon Yusuf, in an interview with our correspondent, said residents in many parts of Lagos, Abuja and other commercial cities did not obtain adequate approvals from government agencies before building.
He added, “As much as possible, part of the responsibilities of government is to protect lives and property and ensure that our environment is healthy for all to live in. There are a lot of infractions in our environment. Generally, people are very reluctant when they are asked to obey building laws.
“There are certain areas that one is not expected to build. This is because the land characteristics of that area do not support people to build on it. No building should be close to river banks, water basin areas and drainages, amongst others. These areas are threats to human life. When there is an overflow of water or release of water from the dam, they go through these rivers and overflow their banks to nothing less than 200 metres on both sides.
“There are instances in Ikorodu where the government told residents to relocate to houses built for them in the Agbowa area, but they refused to relocate. As far as I know, the places are empty.”
He said Nigerians must learn to show responsibility before pointing accusing fingers at the government for demolishing their property.
The immediate past president of the Association of Town Planning Consultants of Nigeria, Moses Ogunleye, in an interview with Sunday PUNCH, told victims of demolition to sue the government if they had proof that they got approval before building.
He stated that the primary thing in the housing sector was to allow plans to precede development.
He added, “All those places where demolition are being carried out, we find out that people just move to those sites and build without government approval. When the government wakes up and says they want to bring some orderliness, they begin to cry foul. There are some communities where there are no development plans. People just keep building.
“Every development must be within the context of a plan. The road would have been decided; where substations or transformers, drainages, hospitals, markets, rail and the rest would be would have also been decided before development is carried out.
“There is also an issue with enforcement. This is why when government goes to demolish, people would ask what they were doing when the builders were developing those sites. Why did government not act before they got to the level where they were? There must be enforcement at all times.”
