SLUM CLEANING
Our new Jand correspondent Nkem Ifejika tells us how slum-dwellers are treated - or mistreated - in Lagos, and other parts of the world.
There’s much to be understood about a society from the way it treats its most vulnerable citizens. All around the world, laws are being enacted to protect people who are the minority. Homosexual people, whatever your religious beliefs, should not be treated as sub-human. Jewish people should not, even if you believe Semite shysters were responsible for the death of the Messiah, be exterminated in gas chambers. But all around the world, people who live in slums are constantly discriminated against.
Lagos is one city where housing rules differ depending on which side of the tracks you live on. In fact, to be more precise, whether you live on the tracks (as many do), or off the tracks. Lagos has one of the acutest housing problems in the world. Of the top thirty most populous cities in the world, of which Lagos is one, it is one of the most densely populated. Yet, there are no new buildings reaching skywards as other major cities have done. This is not to say that packing people into tall buildings like sardines will solve Lagos’s housing problems, but it could be an indication that something is being done to tackle the problem.
Lagos had the infamous incident in 1990, when up to 300,000 residents of the Maroko slum area of Victoria Island were given seven days to leave their houses. Some were relocated to other parts of Lagos, where the new evictees were met with crumbling sub-standard housing. Such removals occur all the time in the developing world. However, in the western media, we seldom hear of slum clearance, except when they have been enacted by pariah states.
Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe got wall to wall coverage for Operation Murambatsvina, when hundreds of thousands of Harare residents were evicted from their homes. The term “murambatsvina” literally means “drive out trash” in Shona. And therein lies the problem. Official types see slum dwellers as filth, something to be discarded bare naked, without the dignity of a rubbish bag or trash can. It’s difficult not to see such evictions as politically motivated. Mugabe’s electoral nemeses would probably be drawn from the disaffected urban poor.
Many parts of New Delhi are being demolished to make way for gleaming new buildings which will be used during the 2010 Commonwealth Games. In 2005, President Obasanjo gave permission effectively for the population of Abuja to be reduced. The plans for the city were drawn up in 1978 by urban planners in the United States, prescribing a population of no more than three million people. The idea is to get rid of excess baggage of four million slum dwellers.
When Maroko was reduced to rubble, and monuments to mammon erected in its place, it removed people who are the heartbeat of Lagos. The bus drivers, the conductors, the electricians, the hawkers, the plumbers, are the people who keep the city ticking. Many of them have no reasons to be alive, but still amazingly eke out an existence in the harshest of cities. In the place of the slums, we’ve raised up shiny corporate buildings with limited social responsibility. Just as colossal historic buildings in the City of London have the blood of African slaves smeared invisibly on their walls, these new buildings in Lagos have these people’s souls buried beneath their foundations.
The razing of Maroko was indirectly funded by the World Bank, who, surprise, surprise was paying for the new buildings to go up. Some of the evictees were moved further up the Lekki “expressway”, further out into expanding Lagos. The city is growing ever outwards, and has essentially become a grand commuter belt – without the commuter transport system.
The irony, or lack, of slum demolishing in Lagos is the double standards with which different parts of society are treated. The government, strictly speaking, have a right to demolish illegally built housing. And they do so. When judges pass judgement, they’re supposed to do so without fear, favour, affection, or ill will. But it appears that these standards don’t extend to all.
Satellite Town is a commuter town on the road out of Lagos heading towards Badagry. If one was searching for an ideal middle class family in Nigeria, Satellite Town is the kind of place they’d be found. The area was brought up by the government in the 1960s and ‘70s to house its civil servants, and military brass. Some of the areas were also allocated to families of oil workers, and other private buyers. Their children all go to school, even if they’re not dropped off by drivers, and then go down the road to LASU and similar universities, rather than UNILAG. They have neighbourhood meetings, and ask questions about the half-completed road. The road is, by some miracle, finished by the next week.
When the town was conceived, only bungalows were supposed to be built in the area. However, a quick drive through and it becomes obvious how little attention has been paid to the law. While erecting storey buildings rather bungalows will hardly shut you out of heaven, it is illegal. And, going by general standards, illegal buildings should be brought down. But these are some of the people who decide to demolish the houses on the other side of town, and if push comes to shove, they have access to thick brown envelopes.
People in Satellite Town build monstrosities which will house fewer people than they should, while people on the tracks in another part of town are driven from their homes.
Lagos is the proverbial land of milk and honey in Nigeria. Its population is growing at a greater rate than the country itself. By 2015, Lagos will have more than 20 million people, in just nine years’ time. If the government (federal or state) can’t give people in Lagos somewhere to live without destroying people’s lives, then there’s little hope for Nigeria’s development.
