Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Lagos: Progress and the Homeless

In truth, as one who teaches human rights and have occasionally written on this
subject matter, I say amen to this submission. Our leaders cannot and should not
pretend that this problem does not exist. As members of the informed public, we
plead with our chiefs to do the right thing--provide our poor with their basic
necessities of life. Such a policy can only lead to political
solidity--desperately needed in this country.

Ike Udogu

----- Original Message -----
From: kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu>
Date: Saturday, March 2, 2013 1:21 pm
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Lagos: Progress and the Homeless
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

> we don't have dismiss this just because the nyt is writing it
> either. in
> fact, nossiter is a decent reporter, and we get absolutely nowhere
> when
> we express such skepticism when the major american journal, and one
> of
> their lead journalists, puts an important story like this on the
> front
> page. how on earth are we supposed to mobilize public opinion, and
> especially on a social issue of this magnitude? housing is actually
> a
> human right, not just a nice thing. these actions violate the
> united
> nations declaration of human rights, i am not a lawyer, but look
> at
> article 25 and tell me this didn't violate it.
> i want to second Folu's outrage at this. we should be in the
> progressive
> forefront of those who care about the poor who can't do anything
> about this!
> ken
> Article 12:
>
> * No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his
> privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his
> honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of
> the law against such interference or attacks.
>
> ^ To <http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/#atop>
>
>
> Article 13.
>
> * (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence
> within the borders of each state.
> *
>
>
> Article 17.
>
> * (1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in
> association with others.
> * (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
>
> ^ Top <http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/#atop>
>
>
> Article 25.
>
> * (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for
> the health and well-being of himself and of his family,
> including food,
> clothing, *housing* and medical care and necessary social
> services, and the right to security in the event of
> unemployment, sickness,
> disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in
> circumstances beyond his control.
>
>
> *
>
> On 3/2/13 12:36 PM, Ayo Obe wrote:
> > I wouldn't necessarily have accepted this just because the NYT
> was
> > writing it, but the statements attributed to the Lagos State
> > Commissioner for Housing have an all too familiar ring. The
> attitude
> > of the LASG seems to be to either deny the existence of actual
> people
> > in the so-called slums, or to have an attitude that they should
> return
> > "to where they came from", that being some imaginary village
> somewhere
> > in Nigeria, or even some other country. Not unlike the mentality
> with
> > which Abuja was set up: specifically 'not for the poor'.
> >
> > It's as if they trying to create an enclave in one part of the
> > country, partly a result of being in denial about the situation
> in
> > other parts of Nigeria: the idea that 47% unemployment in Zamfara
> > State doesn't or shouldn't affect Lagos, ditto the depredations
> of
> > Boko Haram across the north. We can 'insulate' ourselves and
> anyone
> > who doesn't fit in should just ... just vanish.
> >
> > Ayo
> > I invite you to follow me on Twitter @naijama
> >
> > On 2 Mar 2013, at 17:19, Nkolika Ebele <nkolikae@yahoo.com
> > <mailto:nkolikae@yahoo.com>> wrote:
> >
> >> This is very sad. The policy lacks human face. Lagos State
> government
> >> should have provided them with an alternative. Lagos is not
> composed
> >> of the rich and middle class, the poor should be encouraged to
> move
> >> ahead.
> >> Nkolika
> >>
> >> *From:* Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu
> >> <mailto:toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu>>
> >> *To:* dialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
> >> <mailto:USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>>
> >> *Sent:* Saturday, March 2, 2013 1:22 PM
> >> *Subject:* USA Africa Dialogue Series - Lagos: Progress and the
> Homeless>>
> >> In Nigeria's Largest City, Homeless Are Paying the Price of
> Progress>>
> >>
> >> The New York Times <http://www.nytimes.com/>
> >>
> >> March 1, 2013
> >>
> >>
> >> By ADAM NOSSITER
> >>
>
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/n/adam_nossiter/index.html>>>
> >> LAGOS, Nigeria — The young man with the crowbar stood on a heap
> of
> >> rubble — planks, pallets, remains of pots, bits of cardboard,
> wisps
> >> of clothing, chunks of concrete — indistinguishable from every
> other
> >> pile in a field of debris stretching far into the distance.
> >> "This is the home I am staying in before Fashola demolished it,"
> said
> >> John Momoh, 28, looking down at the pile, referring to the
> governor
> >> of Lagos, Babatunde Fashola. Mr. Momoh, a driver, searched
> doggedly
> >> for anything salvageable — a nail, a board — in the mess.
> >> Government backhoes came in and plowed through Mr. Momoh's
> simple
> >> wooden dwelling and some 500 like it last Saturday, instantly
> making
> >> homeless perhaps 10,000 of Lagos's poorest residents and
> destroying a
> >> decades-old slum, Badia East. For days, residents wandered the
> >> chaotic rubble-strewn field, near prime Lagos real estate.
> >> They were dazed and angry. Small children slept on the muddy
> ground.
> >> Men climbed the mounds of rubble, searching. In intense heat,
> women,
> >> men and children said they were hungry and sleeping outside. The
> >> government had destroyed their present, they said, without
> making any
> >> provision for their future.
> >> "I lost everything," Mr. Momoh said. "We are trying to bring out
> some
> >> sticks, to look for our daily bread," he said, poking the
> rubble. "We
> >> don't have money to eat."
> >> A 30-year-old cook, Kingsley Saviouru, said: "They demolished
> >> everything. They didn't give us anything. We are here, suffering."
> >> Under Lagos's energetic governor, much lauded in the
> international
> >> financial media, this crowded megalopolis of high rises, filthy
> >> lagoons, fierce traffic jams and sprawling slums, home to
> perhaps 21
> >> million people, has proclaimed its ambition to become the
> region's,
> >> if not Africa's, premier business center.
> >> Infrastructure and housing projects abound, including a light-
> rail
> >> network whose trestles already vault crowded neighborhoods, and
> a
> >> vast upmarket Dubai-style shopping and housing development built
> out
> >> into the Atlantic Ocean, inaugurated last week by former
> President
> >> Bill Clinton. A new Porsche dealership has opened in the
> financial
> >> district.
> >> In this gleaming vision, the old Lagos of slums has an uncertain
> >> future. Two-thirds of the city's residents live in "informal"
> >> neighborhoods, as activists call them, while more than one
> million of
> >> the city's poor have been forcibly ejected from their homes in
> >> largely unannounced, government slum clearances over the last 15
> >> years, a leading activist group says.
> >> Last summer, there was a brief outcry when government speedboats
> >> bearing machete-carrying men cleared out the floating
> neighborhood of
> >> Makoko, making some 30,000 people homeless. At the vast city
> dump at
> >> Ojota, where thousands eke out a living, shacks are cleared out
> >> frequently, residents complained.
> >> The Nigerian government's untender approach to its poor, who
> account
> >> for at least 70 percent of the population, was again on full
> display
> >> last Saturday at Badia East, where even more demolition —
> another
> >> 40,000 live there — is now threatened. The scene Saturday was
> >> classic: a black police vehicle pulled up early, armed,
> uniformed
> >> policemen sprang out to quell any restiveness, and the backhoes
> went
> >> to work under the eyes of dismayed residents, slashing through
> thin
> >> wood and concrete block.
> >> Street toughs — called "Area Boys" in Lagos, and often employed
> by
> >> the state government's demolition squad for around $10,
> activists
> >> said — got busy where the backhoes could not penetrate, smashing
> >> flimsy structures with sledgehammers and, Mr. Momoh and others
> said,
> >> stealing residents' possessions.
> >> Many said they were given 20 minutes, at most, to pack up their
> >> belongings.
> >> "Everybody was running helter-skelter," said a resident, Femi
> >> Aiyenuro, adding that those who went back in to retrieve
> possessions
> >> risked being beaten with rifle butts and batons. "They started
> >> beating people."
> >> What little that could be salvaged was piled along a railway
> line
> >> running along Badia's edge.
> >> "They were flogging me," said Charity Julius, 27 and pregnant.
> She
> >> said she ran into her dwelling to fetch her baby boy, and once
> he was
> >> safely out, she ran back to gather as many possessions as she
> could.
> >> The police did not like that and beat her, she said, showing a
> bruise
> >> on her right arm as evidence.
> >> The Lagos state commissioner for housing, Adedeji Olatubosun
> Jeje,
> >> provided a different version of events.
> >> "It's a regeneration of a slum," he said. "We gave enough
> >> notification. The government intends to develop 1,008 housing
> units.
> >> What we removed was just shanties. Nobody was even living in
> those
> >> shanties. Maybe we had a couple of squatters living there."
> >> As for the new housing, "there's not a chance they can afford
> it,"
> >> said Felix Morka, executive director of the Social and Economic
> >> Rights Action Center, a local economic rights group, adding that
> >> Badia residents earn under $100 a month on average. The World
> Bank
> >> had previously included Badia on a list of slum communities for
> >> upgrade, Mr. Morka noted.
> >> That list is now moot. Within six hours, Badia East was gone.
> >> "We don't have anywhere to stay," said Joy Austin, a mother of
> three.
> >> "Everybody is outside now. We don't have anywhere to go."
> >> Her sleeping accommodation is now a filthy foam mattress placed
> on
> >> cardboard, in the mud; her children sleep under low torn
> mosquito nets.
> >> A wig pokes out of the rubble; nearby are a few bras, a child's
> toy
> >> gun, some CDs, a torn shirt, a crushed shampoo bottle, and some
> >> flip-flops. At the edge of the rubble-field, small boys played
> >> makeshift table tennis on two boards placed atop jerrycans while
> a
> >> young man pushed a wheelbarrow of salvaged wood with a small
> Nigerian
> >> flag tied to it. In the evening, boys who clambered barefoot
> over the
> >> upturned, nail-studded boards received painful wounds.
> >> Mr. Morka, a Harvard-trained lawyer who is challenging the state
> >> government in court over the demolitions, said: "They want a
> Lagos
> >> that looks good, that feels good, that glitters. But they are
> well
> >> aware that Lagos is Lagos because of the people that live here.
> They
> >> are doing this without regard for the people who live here."
> >> That sentiment — that the government had, bewilderingly,
> declared
> >> open season on its own people — permeated the Badia residents.
> >> "I don't know the reason why they do all this," said Ms. Austin,
> as
> >> other residents crowded around. "I don't know why they break
> >> everything. We don't expect it, now. People were still sleeping.
> We
> >> didn't pack up anything."
> >> Mr. Aiyenuro, a security guard who said he had built his house
> >> himself, said: "We had thousands of people living here. Now,
> >> everything is destroyed."
> >> Nobody said they were leaving the area. "There's a misguided
> belief
> >> that if you demolish the slum, they will just go back to the
> >> village," said Megan Chapman, an American lawyer who works with
> Mr.
> >> Morka. "It's completely untrue. They don't just disappear."
> >> Here and there, hot anger at the governor, Mr. Fashola, flashed
> out
> >> of the crowd.
> >> "We're not criminals!" shouted Peter Patersoa, a 39-year-old
> >> bricklayer and father of a one-month-old. "Fashola is doing
> wrong
> >> work! He's not doing good in Lagos State."
> >> Another crowd gathered. "We are hoping in God to favor us," Mr.
> >> Aiyenuro said. "Please, we are suffering."
> >>
> >>
> >> More in Africa (2 of 36 articles)
> >>
> >>
> >> French and Chad Forces Strike Militants in the Mountains of
> >> Mali
> >> <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/02/world/africa/french-and-
> chad-forces-bear-down-on-militants-in-
>
mali.html?src=un&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Fworld%2Fafrica%2Findex.jsonp>>>
> >> Read More »
> >> <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/02/world/africa/french-and-chad-
> forces-bear-down-on-militants-in-
>
mali.html?src=un&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Fworld%2Fafrica%2Findex.jsonp>>>
> >> Toyin Falola
> >> Department of History
> >> The University of Texas at Austin
> >> 104 Inner Campus Drive
> >> Austin, TX 78712-0220
> >> USA
> >> 512 475 7224
> >> 512 475 7222 (fax)
> >> http://www.toyinfalola.com <http://www.toyinfalola.com/>
> >> http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa
> >> http://groups.google.com/group/yorubaaffairs
> >> http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
> >> --
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> --
> kenneth w. harrow
> faculty excellence advocate
> distinguished professor of english
> michigan state university
> department of english
> 619 red cedar road
> room C-614 wells hall
> east lansing, mi 48824
> ph. 517 803 8839
> harrow@msu.edu
>
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