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At least 9,000 people have been forcefully evicted from a riverside community in Nigeria's most populous city, Lagos. Like many waterfront communities across the city, it has faced multiple threats and been targeted by luxury real estate developers. A high court order prohibited any eviction without relocating residents, yet they still woke up on Friday to demolition equipment and armed men, as NPR's Emmanuel Akinwotu reports.
(SOUNDBITE OF BULLDOZING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Screaming).
EMMANUEL AKINWOTU, BYLINE: A train of hundreds of people make their way through narrow streets.
(CROSSTALK)
AKINWOTU: They clutch whatever they can hold, walking under the weight of mattresses, suitcases and bags of clothes, carried on their heads. Dust hangs in the air and blurs the chaos in a riverside inner-city community called Ilaje-Otumara, which first settled here in 1920.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).
AKINWOTU: But on Friday, a bulldozer demolished more than a century of community and history in a matter of moments, with barely any warning.
YEMI OLADAPO: I was born in this community. I grew up there. I married there.
AKINWOTU: Fifty-two-year-old Yemi Oladapo is sitting on a nearby curb with two of her three children, next to what's left of their belongings.
OLADAPO: I'm down. I don't even know where to go. Where are we sleeping? I don't even know - with my children. I'm a single mother.
AKINWOTU: She said officials from the Lagos state government arrived here two weeks ago, marking the houses with 15-day demolition notices.
OLADAPO: That's what we all be hearing - that those bylaws (ph) are the...
AKINWOTU: A local traditional ruler with influence in the government called Oba Oto claimed he was the owner of the land and was bent on taking it back, she said. Officials from the Lagos state government reassured the community that the demolitions would be postponed as recently as yesterday.
(SOUNDBITE OF BULLDOZING)
AKINWOTU: But on Friday morning, they woke to scores of police officers, state officials and young men known as area boys, carrying clubs and machetes, ordering them to leave immediately.
ALBERT BAMIDELE: So we're homeless now. Nowhere to stay, nowhere to sleep - you can't rent. Rent is very high now.
AKINWOTU: Forty-five-year-old Albert Bamidele is next to her and is frantic, pacing up and down in anger. He said the community trusted the government's assurances, until it was too late.
BAMIDELE: You can't defeat us because we tried all we could to plead the government to give us the time so we can...
AKINWOTU: Residents have suffered threats of eviction for years, like many waterfront communities in Lagos, where powerful interests are eager to move in and build on prime real estate.
BAMIDELE: I could not take anything. My computer system - everything was closed. But it was closed inside there.
AKINWOTU: Police state officials and dozens of young men armed with machetes and sticks patrol the settlement. When I'm caught talking to residents by a man carrying a machete, I'm grabbed and led away to a vehicle.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Out, out, out.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Non-English language spoken).
AKINWOTU: But the last person I speak to is 62-year-old Adeto Banbade, sitting on the roadside near her mattress, her fan, and bags of clothes, documents and pictures.
ADETO BANBADE: (Crying, speaking Yoruba).
AKINWOTU: She weeps and says in Yoruba, where is she supposed to go? She was born here, in Ilaje-Otumara, but now has lost everything. She says the government comes here every election cycle to canvass for votes and give locals money and food, but that same government has now destroyed their lives.
BANBADE: (Crying, speaking Yoruba).
AKINWOTU: "The government is oppressing us," she says. "They're oppressing us."
BANBADE: (Crying, speaking Yoruba).
AKINWOTU: Emmanuel Akinwotu, NPR News, Lagos.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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