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Lagos State government pulls down buildings in some areas in Agege threatened by severe flooding

For residents of Odejobi Street, Agege, situated along the Agege- Iju Ishaga Road and Agege- Abule Egba Road, Sunday, October 2, is a day they would not forget in a hurry. As early as 7 a.m., men of the Lagos State task force from the Ministry of the Environment, backed by a detachment of police numbering over 50, swooped on the street and demolished all the houses on one side of the street.

Government’s action was said to be a fallout of the flood that submerged the area after the July 10, rain in Lagos. The decision to demolish the houses in the street was taken after Babatunde Fashola, Lagos State governor, visited the area during his tour of flood affected areas last July.

But it has been tales of woes by residents whose houses were demolished. Apart from being rendered homeless, some of them lost all their properties. Children whose parents’ houses were demolished have not been able to go to school since then.

Bankole Oluwase is one of those who lost properties. “They came on Sunday as early as 7 a.m., woke us up from sleep and started demolishing the houses.” He said the demolition was a great setback for him because he lost everything. 

Owolabi Sule, a Banking and Finance student of the Lagos State Polytechnic, Ikorodu, is another resident who lost properties during the demolition.  He said he was in school when he received information that the demolition of the area was going on. Sule said he lost all his credentials and was at a loss on what  to do. He said, in Ibadan, which also experienced flood problem, the victims were compensated with N100, 000 each without their buildings being demolished and wondered why the Lagos State government would give N50, 000 as compensation and turn around to demolish their houses.

Emeka Nsofor, another resident, described as callous the way the government agents carried out the demolition. He said they were woken up as early as 7 a.m. by the task force and ordered at gun point to pack out their belongings.

The picture of the hopelessness of the affected residents was best painted by Bisi Ogundele, who is in her 60s. She was in tears while begging a landlord in one of the adjoining houses in the area to allow her children to sleep in their passage for one night  on Tuesday, October 4.

Efiowan Asuquo, another resident whose compound was also pulled down, is now squatting with a friend in Abule-Egba, on the outskirts of Lagos. But unlike some others who could not remove their properties in time before the bulldozers swooped on their compound, she still has cause to thank God because she was able to remove her properties before her house was pulled down. She told Newswatch that officials of the Ministry of the Environment visited the area on Friday, September 30, and served a three-day quit notice and this made her to prepare herself for the worst that eventually happened.

The affected residents were unhappy that they were given only three days quit notice which expired on Sunday, when the demolition took place. They also claimed that the N50, 000 compensation government paid to residents did not go round and also went into wrong hands with the ministry officials also becoming beneficiaries.

Wale Ogunrede, a landlord in the street whose house escaped demolition, said the flood problem in the area worsened after a road construction company, doing rehabilitation work on the Agege-Iju Ishaga Road, diverted water channel from the road to the street and the adjoining area.

But Wale Ahmed, Lagos State commissioner for Special Duties, justified the demolition, insisting that due process was followed as the residents were given enough notice since July. He said contrary to the claim that they were given only three days notice, the residents were told to vacate the area since the July 10 flooding in Lagos after a heavy downpour.

According to Ahmed, before the Sunday demolition, officials of the Ministry of the Environment accompanied by the state task force, visited the area two weeks earlier to urge them to vacate the area as government was bent on pulling down structures on the side of the road blocking the drainage channel. He also denied the claim by residents that the N50,000 compensation government paid to ease their relocation did not go round; insisting that over 300 residents of the Odejobi Street benefited. “The truth is that all the residents of the area were compensated because we told them that all the houses would be affected,” he said.

Odejobi Street and all the adjoining streets in the area around Pen-Cinema, Agege, were some of the areas in Lagos that were submerged by flood in the Sunday, July 10 flooding. Some houses on the street were submerged by flood for a whole week and residents had to use pumping machines to bail water from their compounds.

The state government had earlier carried out a similar demolition exercises in Ilaje-Bariga, Orile, Ebute Metta and Iwaya as part of the efforts of the Fashola administration’s agenda to end the problem of the flooding in Lagos State.