Evicted residents at a press briefing on TuesdayForcefully evicted residents of Badia East, Badia West and Ebute Ilaje-Bariga areas of Lagos spoke up again on Tuesday, held a press briefing and embarked on another peaceful protest to demand that the silence that has greeted their plight since over 10, 000 of them were rendered homeless some months ago by government bulldozers be finally replaced by action.
Since they were forcibly evicted from their homes on 18, 19 and 22 September 2015, hundreds of residents of Badia East and West have continued to suffer from homelessness and loss of livelihoods. Many have died, many continue to live in makeshift shelters at the demolition site, virtually none has received any relief material from the Lagos State Government, their businesses have been destroyed and their children have dropped out of school.
Worst, neither Governor Akinwunmi Ambode nor any senior government official has visited them since bulldozers turned their homes into heaps of crushed metals and debris.
In a statement read at the briefing, the Lagos Chapter of the Nigerian Slum/Informal Settlement Federation condemned the forced evictions and called on the government to “resettle evictees from Badia East and Badia West to an appropriate location and compensate them for all their losses”.
“If the State Government is not prepared to live up to its obligations and demonstrate a CHANGE from the injustices of the past, we call on the Federation to step in,” they said.
The Federation said it was also “deeply concerned about the sudden and thoughtlessness disruptions of the livelihoods of thousands of people working in sand dealing at Ebute Ilaje-Bariga”.
“The sand dealers in our community are organised into businesses that are duly registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission and that have procured licences and paid fees for years to both Federal and State authorities,” the organisation said.
Early this year, without any due process of law, or any apparent legal authority, the Lagos State Government ordered them to stop their businesses “with immediate effect”.
Now, for four months, law abiding, low income workers in Ebute Ilaje, Bariga and from dozens of other communities across Lagos who relied on the sand dealing business have been deprived of their livelihoods and are suffering from hunger and poverty.
“We call on the State Government, and the Federal Government if need be, to immediately restore the livelihoods of the people of Ebute Ilaja and others depending on the lawful sand digging business there,” the Federation said, adding that “the sudden disruption of livelihoods, without notice, without reasons, and without alternatives, is an infringement on their right to life of thousands and must be put right immediately”.
In a letter to Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos State, Badia East evictees in Ijora Badia, Apapa-Iganmu Local Council Development Area, called on the governor to visit their community to see for himself the suffering they face.
Mr. Jerry Arabamen, a father of six children, who spoke on behalf of the communities, called on Mr. Ambode to send relief material to “assist us with daily suffering we face and provide medical attention to those who are sick and visit those who have lost loved ones”.
He pleaded with the government to relocate them with “a genuine resettlement plan and compensation for their losses.
So far, the government has remained silent, and majority of Lagosians have looked the other way, referring to Badia residents are “illegals”.
But the story of Badia dates back to 1973, when the Federal Government of Nigeria, relocated residents who lived around where the current day National Theatre edifice is located to the swampy Badia area. Nigeria had become independent in 1960 and the founding fathers were trying to build a nation long in the hands of “colonial masters”.
Badia new occupants have lived in the area since that time, even after the Land Use Decree of 1978 which later became an Act of the National Assembly with the return of democracy in 1999, recognised all land ownership as of 1978 when the Land Use Decree came into effect.
That decree automatically gave the owners of land as of 1978 a “deemed” right of occupancy, a legal term that means owners of lands have this right even if they never applied for certificate of occupancy.
That act also specifically said that people who have occupied a government land for at least 20 years cannot be driven out of that land even by the government, in this case the Federal Government.
But in 2002, the Ijora family, a powerful family in Lagos, went to court against three residents of Badia, praying that the land taken from them by the British colonial government in 1926 and handed over to the Federal Government of Nigeria after independence from Britain in 1960 be handed back to them.
The Ijora family, claimed without any evidence provided in court, that the Government had given them back their land in the 1980s or 1990s. They claimed a survey in 1919 showed the land belonged to them before it was taken over by the British colonial power in 1926.
Many lawyers argue that without evidence, the land remains a property of the Federal Government and because Badia residents were relocated there by the same government and have lived there for more than 40 years, the law of limitations prevents even the Federal Government to take the land away from them.
They also argue that the court ruling giving the land back to the Ijora family was against only three families not the thousands of people who have now been rendered homeless.
As Mr. Ambode marks one year in office in four days, many argue that the celebrations are already tarnished by his silence towards plight of suffering Badia and Ebute Ilaje-Bariga residents.