Famed for its island status and its limited accessibility, the artificial sheltered beach known as Tarkwa Bay is a top destination spot for tourists who want to play in water, as well as residents who just want to make a getaway from the grueling nature of Lagos city life. Lovers take short boat trips to strengthen their bond, families go there in a bid to make their weekends less routine, and corporate organizations send their employees for retreats. The host community is accommodating, too, with the peaceful interaction between residents and visitors making for a functional ecosystem.
This smooth coexistence has recently been interrupted, however, with residents of Tarkwa Bay being forcefully evicted from their homes. On Tuesday January 21, naval officials stormed the area with guns, shooting sporadically and ordering people to take their belongings and leave immediately. According to eyewitness accounts, residents were given only one hour to leave before demolitions began.
This is hardly the first time that people dwelling in slums have been evicted without notice, under the pretext of implementing plans for urban expansion of the city of Lagos. In 2017, the Lagos State government threw out over 50,000 residents from the Otodo Gbame slum, and in spite of a court injunction declaring the eviction to be unlawful and ordering the government to resettle the victims, there have been no reparations for those affected. The city’s Lekki axis once housed a low-cost settlement known as Maroko, which was demolished in 1990 without any efforts to provide resettlement for the 300,000 people who were displaced.
The reason often adduced by the government in providing a rationale for these sudden demolitions is an increase in crime rate – residents of Tarkwa Bay have been accused of vandalizing oil pipelines – but should tens of thousands suffer for the sins of a few? Such a step as recently taken by the Lagos State government creates more problems than it sets out to solve, with many now homeless, properties destroyed and (in some cases) people having to split from their families. Sending people into the streets with nowhere to go is hardly the wisest way to fight crime in the slums.
There have been arguments that there is need to improve the aesthetics of the city, and that the presence of slum dwellers makes Tarkwa Bay unattractive to potential tourists, but what happens when people are forcefully ejected from their homes with no plans for resettlement is that they end up in the streets. They will be found sleeping under the city’s bridges, they will be found at bus stops and parks, and they will hound cars in traffic while begging for alms. In an attempt to make one location more aesthetically appealing, the entire city just might be uglier for it.
Sure enough, there is need for urban expansion, but the sequence of events over the years makes it easy to assume that the mega-city ambitions of the Lagos State government are playing out at the expense of the poor. There is more to town planning and urban development than just uprooting people from their homes without sufficient notice or any form of compensation to ameliorate the damage. Evictions and demolitions tend to be counter-productive, as they trigger an unending cycle of poverty that will become increasingly harder to erase.
The government has to balance its real estate aspirations with current infrastructural realities, with the plight of the people in prime focus. Residents can’t suffer simply because Lagos State is trying to expand; that is a cost too heavy. A government can be regarded as many things, but being insensitive to the needs of its citizens should not be one of them.
