Homeless in Lagos: The politics of place

This is a First Person column by Elizabeth Iwunwa, who has been living, studying and working on Prince Edward Island since 2014. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please seethe FAQ.

Lagos is a city whose jagged edge is its charm. Stretches of open space cannot simply be left alone.

Mallams arrange plates of slender tomatoes and baskets of red onions along freshly tarred roads. In the morning, small crowds surround newspaper vendors to debate the significance of import tariffs and compare European football league scores. Kiosks selling tinned milk, insecticide, and roasted groundnuts appear on street corners and call centres erect giant, colourful umbrellas and charge their customers per minute of a call.

This is nothing like Charlottetown, a city devoid of commotion and spectacle where simple obedience to the law guides the conduct of strangers. This is where I now live.

Traffic jams were part of growing up in Lagos. Vehicles stretched for hours and miles but miraculously vanished when the president visited. Traders sold peeled oranges, cold soft drinks, and sausage rolls to fatigued drivers and passengers. On these same roads sat those who begged for alms. They were sometimes wheeled by their young children or carrying babies on their backs.

They slept under bridges at night; separated from the public gaze by tarpaulins discoloured by rain or stretched sacks of rice fastened with pegs. Sitting in my father's car on the way to school, it did not occur to me that those my age who ran on main roads unfazed by death slept in the open.

Tragedy and the march forward

Home was a quiet housing estate on the Lagos mainland where I rode my sister's bicycle and played in the rain with my siblings when our mother was out. Our neighbour, Johnny, sometimes came to play tennis with my brother and watermelons grew where we threw seed and forgot. Home was where my parents hosted umunna meetings and community mass.

I did not realize that there was a world in which girls came into womanhood at the mercy of strangers and the elements. That having found a place to lay one's head, by evening, one could return to carting earthly possessions in polyethylene bags because of an edict signed by the governor that afternoon.

Lagos absorbs tragedy and marches forward with no recollection of its people's pain.

I discovered this on January 27, 2002, when fire began in a street market in Ikeja and spread to an armoury where munitions were stored. Soldiers and their families lived in the barracks here. By six o'clock that Sunday evening, an explosion levelled several blocks and killed about 300 people. The earth trembling under their feet, residents ran for safety and as many as 700 died in the stampede.

I was with my parents that evening in Ikeja and on the way to hospital. I was asleep in the backseat with a bitter tongue and awoke to an orange sky. Fire from the munitions fell like hail all over Lagos. Military rule ended in 1999 so the governor's special broadcast that evening was to explain and assure that the blast was not evidence of a coup in progress. We arrived at home to relatives who had run from Ikeja. It was in this same house that our lesson teacher, Mr. Cyprian, a man whose temper was as short as his stature, gave us lessons after school.

A city hostile to the poor

Lagos is a megacity startled by its own growth. For decades, people have come from across Nigeria and neighbouring countries like Togo to forge new paths. Because Boko Haram has killed and maimed thousands in the North, people come here to start afresh, and more are added to the count daily.

Living in Lagos involves accepting that one is a misfortune away from penury.

Like the rest of Nigeria, Lagos practices a system of social governance called BYOI Bring Your Own Infrastructure turning households into little pockets of self-governing entities. Boreholes for water, generators for electricity, prayers for safety, hope for good health. At night, instead of the sound of crickets chirping or trees swaying in the gentle breeze, we endure a cacophony furnished by an orchestra of generators.

Lagos is powered by the fevered striving of a people who know that no one will catch them if they fall. For many, basic amenities like decent housing are out of reach.

As an alternative, some build floating houses made of wood and corrugated iron on the Lagos lagoon. Waterfront communities like this in Makoko and Otodo Gbame are often located by Lagos Island, closest to prime real estate. Developers build expensive dwellings for the nouveau riche and demolish the houses people have carved for themselves in a city that is hostile to the poor.

'No money, no love'

In 2017, those who lived in Otodo Gbame were evicted en-masse and without prior notice. Teargassed by police, they watched bulldozers level their homes. This instance of government-sanctioned evictions instantly made 30,000 people homeless. Much is spoken of attempts to clean up the city and attract foreign investors, with a casual disregard for the impact on the human beings whose dignity it is inconvenient to uphold.

With national unemployment at 33 per cent, many who come to Lagos do so with nothing but the clothes on their backs and pockets full of dreams. But it doesn't matter. No money, no love.

Those who find work as bus conductors or street sweepers make enough to eat but not enough to put a roof over their heads. It is not unusual for employers, even and especially government, to owe salaries. Wealth does not insulate a person from these inadequacies that take little political will to rectify. A prince and a pauper can suffer the same fate in an emergency. The city is a great leveller.

Finding redemption

Lagos is not alone in its failure to provide decent shelter for its people. Those who live in Brazilian favelas or in Dharavi in India share the pain that the unplanned consequence of progress brings. Same can be said of P.E.I., where new Islanders have added colour and vibrance. But despite the obvious benefit of this growth in numbers, homelessness is rising. This is for many reasons, one of which is population increase without a requisite increase in social goods.

In Lagos, fights are born of collective frustration and end as quickly as they begin. This is the place where fortune visits daily and may smile at those she finds hard at work.

It remains spoken of as the epicentre of destiny; a place where anybody can become a 'big man' tomorrow. We are a proud people and often for no reason. Property owners write 'DO NOT URINATE HERE' on their fences and yet men empty themselves into stagnant gutters hands akimbo. Drivers paint aphorisms like 'Givers Never Lack' at the back of their lorries propelled forward by hope..

We live in a city that keeps us on our toes; one sleight of hand and you are duped. We are at once defiant and amenable to the craze of a city that itself defies order. Our flaws are many, but we know that the world will come to us as it did during the Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC) in 1977 and as it does during Lagos Fashion Week.

These, perhaps, are the small ways in which Lagos redeems itself.