WARNING: Poor people are not wanted in Lagos megacity

Lagos is now going to be a megacity. Under the able
leadership of Governor Babatunde Fashola, the apostle
of good governance, Lagos is undergoing a major
makeover. The Atlantic Ocean will be banished, to be
replaced by Eko Atlantic; a shimmering new 3.5- mile
island built literally on the water behind a "great wall
of Lagos." Greenery has suddenly appeared in Lagos,
displacing the concrete jungle. There are now parks
with manicured lawns. There are now tree-lined roads.
Pot-holes are now being tarred. Sidewalks are now
provided for pedestrians.
*Eko o ni baje
In the middle of this transformation, a new immigration
department has been opened in Lagos. "Illegal aliens"
are being expelled and are shipped back to their
homelands in the dead of night. New visitors may have
to obtain visas to come here.
All this makes it imperative to determine who exactly is
the Lagosian? Who is entitled to enjoy the new
amenities that Governor Fashola and his team of
dedicated public-servants are bringing to Lagos?
Accordingly, a battle royal has emerged for the rightful
ownership of Lagos. Some are insisting Lagos is no
man's land.
Others are discovering Lagos as their fatherland. But
there is no question that the government has already
determined the precise identity of the true Lagosian.
As far as the Lagos State Government is concerned, the
true Lagosian is not the Yoruba man or the Igbo man.
Neither is he the Hausa man or the Fulani man. The
true Lagosian is the rich man. The poor have been
served quit notice. They are no longer wanted in
Lagos. Fashola's resounding slogan is "Eko o ni baje,"
which means Lagos will not go to the dogs. The poor
are considered the dogs of Lagos. In that troublesome
capacity, they can have no place in Lagos, if Lagos is to
become the megacity of Governor Fashola's lofty
dreams!
Action Governor: For some strange reason, Lagos has
tended to have better Governors than most states of the
federation. But if you were to ask me who is the best
among all the Governors of Lagos, I would answer you
without hesitation. In my opinion, it is Governor
Babatunde Fashola. Fashola is a man with a vision. He
is a man with a purpose. He is a man clearly able to
translate ideas into weapons. He has transformed and is
transforming Lagos right before our very eyes.
But I have a nagging suspicion that the reason why I am
so readily persuaded by Fashola's virtues might not be
unconnected with the fact that I am not a poor man.
The poor themselves may have a very different point of
view. They are probably likely to insist that the best
governor in the history of Lagos is Lateef Kayode
Jakande; alias "Baba Kekere."
I am not a poor man by Nigerian standards. Therefore,
I do not presume to speak for the poor. But then,
increasingly, I am beginning to wonder who exactly
speaks for them in Lagos. One thing is certain, Fashola
speaks primarily for the rich; and this is not good
enough. In the Lagos of today, the poor have no
voice. Fashola's laudable policies are too one-sided.
They are tailor-made for the rich: and are grossly
disadvantageous to the poor.
*Relocating the poor: I don't have to be poor to know
that the poor are increasingly unwelcome in Lagos.
The genius of Fashola is to relocate them to the
outskirts of the city. If they are non-indigenes, they are
relocated back to their homesteads. The systematic
ridding of Lagos of the poor is a longstanding process.
The poor were shipped out of Maroko. It has been
replaced by Oniru where apartments go for an average
of 2.5 million naira a year.
Slums in Mushin, Oluwole and Makoko have been
demolished. The residents were evicted from their
homes, with no talk of rehabilitation. Markets in
Tejuoso, Yaba and Oshodi have been demolished and
rebuilt. The new stalls are beyond the pocket of the
earlier poor occupants. Everywhere in Lagos, the poor
are becoming persona non grata.
In places like Ojota, Makoko, and Ijora-Badia East, the
poor residents have been evicted from their homes. In
some cases, they were given only 72 hours notice to
leave. In Makoko/Iwaya, the government's quit notice
described them "environmental nuisances" that
"undermined the megacity status" of Lagos. It stated
that their menial existence was detrimental to the
government's determination to beautify the Lagos
waterfront.
*Eko Atlantic: As the poor are being squeezed out, so is
more leg-room being created for the rich. The Eko
Atlantic project is the epitome of this. It involves
dredging 140 million tons of sand from the floor of the
Atlantic Ocean to subdue the sea and create nine million
square kilometers of prime real estate, protected by an
eight metre-high wall, vaunted to last 1000 years.
When completed, the project will boast residential
areas, offices, shops, and leisure facilities for 250,000
people, with another 150,000 commuting to work. To
have a foothold in this brave new world, you will need
a cool 300,000 naira for just one square metre of land.
However, what Lagos desperately needs is not a
"Manhattan island" that will cater primarily for the
rich.
Massive low cost housing
What Lagos needs is massive low-cost housing to
accommodate millions of slum-dwellers. The state
government itself acknowledges that Lagos has a
housing shortage in excess of five million. By its own
estimates, it needs an annual growth of at least 200,000
houses to keep up with the population growth. In spite
of this, it touts a six billion-dollar white-elephant
project that ignores this urgent need of the poor masses
in favour of one that caters to the rich few.
*Ban of Okadas: I hate okadas. They are a menace on
the streets. Even the sidewalks are not safe from them.
Okada riders are a law unto themselves. They obey no
traffic rules. They imperil their clients by taking
dangerous risks. The mortuaries and hospitals are filled
with those who have lost life and limb because of their
recklessness. But I will be the first to admit that one of
the reasons I am able to hate okadas with so much
passion is because I have a car. I don't have to take
okadas and have never ever taken them.
Governor Fashola also has a car. So it does not surprise
me that, like me, he is also fed up with the menace of
okadas in Lagos. Therefore, recently an edict was
passed banning them in most areas of Lagos. The
government refused to provide alternative means of
transportation for those who don't have cars before
banning the okadas. This oversight translates into
contempt for the poor. I don't have to be poor to
recognise that it has been disastrous.
Since the banning of the okadas, I have repented of my
earlier hatred of okadas. No matter that I wind up my
tinted windows; the better to enjoy the air-conditioning
in my car, I cannot remain oblivious to the mass of
humanity in Lagos now constrained to walk for miles
or stand for hours at bus-stops, waiting in readiness for
the battle ahead when it will become necessary to fight
for the few spaces available in the few buses when they
finally, finally, arrive.
Let's face it; with the okadas gone, the poor in Lagos
don't get home until midnight and then they have to set
out for work by 5 a.m.; and that is if they have a job. I
asked a lady in my neighbourhood supermarket how
much she makes as a cashier. She told me N20,000 a
month. I don't know how anybody can survive in
Fashola's Lagos with such a salary, especially since over
50 per cent of that goes for transportation alone.
*Paying tolls: The new departure in Fashola's Lagos is
that people now have to pay for driving on tarred
roads. If you are one of the poor residents of Ajah,
Badore, Elegushi, Ajiran, Sangotedo, Abijo, Ibeju, and
other communities in Eti-osa, Epe and Ibeju-Lekki
local government areas, you will now have to pay tolls
for leaving your house to head for the Lagos mainland
and pay again for going back home. On the Lekki
expressway, no less than three tolls are envisaged for
just a 50- kilometre stretch of road.
The Lagos State Government is only interested in
exploiting the poor in this area, and there are literally
millions living there. There is little or no government
infrastructure there. There is no general hospital, and
no low-income housing scheme. No sporting or
recreational facility. No public transportation system.
No public water works: just the payment of tolls. The
original idea was to develop a coastal road as an
alternative route to the tolled road, but this has not been
done.
*No petty-trading: So how can the poor make ends
meet in Lagos? With okada gone, and excluding
outright crime, one option is petty-trading Lagos-style.
Street trading
This entails turning the streets into one big
supermarket, and training for the 2016 Olympics by
running after cars in order to sell something as menial
as groundnuts. But even here, you are likely to be
confronted by the long arm of the law. Street-trading
is frowned at in Lagos. The "Kick Against
Indiscipline" brigade will seize your goods if they get
hold of you.
The Arab Spring outburst in Tunisia started because the
goods of a poor street-trader, Mohamed Bouaziz, were
confiscated by the police. That act brought the man to
the end of his rope. He bought a jerry-can of petrol
and set himself on fire. Those sympathetic to his plight
took to the streets, and the upshot of this was the
overthrow of the government.
Lagos, Nigeria may not be Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia.
Nevertheless, Governor Fashola has a legacy to protect.
Rather than this new policy of banishing the poor to
Siberia, Fashola should sit down and fashion
comprehensive policies that take into consideration their
acute suffering in Lagos. If he does not, his disregard
of the poor will soon overshadow his remarkable
achievements in Lagos State.
-Vanguard Newspapers