Victoria Okoye, Lagos Community Manager
In July, the Lagos State Government razed the homes, businesses, and livelihoods of more than 20,000 residents of the waterfront community of Makoko, a major slum in the megacity. The recent destruction of homes and livelihoods is not a new phenomenon in this waterfront community. Seven years ago, in April 2005, the government led a similar exercise, demolishing houses, churches, shops, and community health clinics, and displacing more than 3,000 people. The trend of these demolitions, and similar ones in Lagos State and across the country over the past few years, highlights the insecure position of land tenancy and title for residents in informal communities and slums like Makoko.
The settlement of Makoko dates back generations to at least the 18th century, when the area was established as a small fishing village on the waterfront. In fact, it is said that the existence of this community predates the existence of Lagos itself as a modern city. For decades, the community has thrived in spite of a government that, for more than 120 years, largely neglected its existence. It is a story told in the lack of infrastructure access and basic services, marginal state government influence, and exclusion even from recent population censuses.
For a government firmly fixed on purging Lagos of its stereotypical characterization as a slum-filled megacity and transforming it into an investment and tourism magnet, Makoko represents a very obvious and very visible problem: With its lack of infrastructure and services, the community has developed informally, its residents live in sub-standard conditions, and the state government has formally designated Makoko a slum. Makoko’s waterfront location represents a prime real estate opportunity where the government could pursue its interest in promoting high-end, private-sector-led property developments, and the government appears keen on pursuing this strategy.
Makoko residents want to stay put, but a series of legal policies and enactments complicate the lawful basis by which many residents can claim ownership of the land on which they and their families live, and have lived for generations. So the community, with the support of local organizations, is working to solidify their right to exist there, by challenging the laws that would disenfranchise them and demonstrating the community’s cultural and economic value.
The precarious legality of tenancy and ownership
Residents in informal slum communities like Makoko have few available legal protections against evictions. While land-owning individuals should possess a certificate of occupancy which would give them title to land, the current land use law vests ownership power in the governor of each state, enabling the local governments with the power to revoke any right of occupancy when the government intends to appropriate the land for a use considered to be in the public interest.
Felix Morka, a lawyer and the Executive Director of the Social and Economic Rights Action Center (SERAC), has long worked on housing rights issues relating to land title and tenancy, including in the community of Makoko. “The land use law literally gives the governor of each state the power to take land for the public interest … in reality, governors exercise that power indiscriminately,” Morka says.
The above law applies to all areas of Lagos State, but once an area is designated as a slum, landlords and tenants face additional challenges and further limitations of their rights, Morka explains: “If you live in those districts classified as slums” (such as areas like Makoko, Ajegunle, Iwaya, Badiya, and Agege) “you can’t get a certificate of title to gain tenure.” If you had existing land ownership, he adds, “you’re consigned to hold your land and title marginally, without any certificate of credit.”
And challenging the government is no easy feat: “Even if there is any individual that has the knowledge and resources to approach the state to be granted a certificate of occupancy, whether pre-existing or not, the government has a policy not to grant such certificate to title,” Morka explains.
Tenants, who may be renting properties on yearly, quarterly, or monthly leases, have even fewer rights, but they do have the right to a reasonable notification of their eviction. In 2011, the current governor of Lagos State, Babatunde Fashola, signed into law the tenancy law in Lagos State, which was intended to clarify the rights between landlords and renters; it also includes provisions to prevent forcible evictions of tenants without due notification. Under the tenancy law, tenants are entitled to receive reasonable notice — at minimum, one month notice of any eviction (six months in the case of a yearly tenant). However, in the case of the July 2012 evictions and demolitions, the government provided only 72 hours notice.
Additionally, Lagos State’s environmental enforcement law grants the local government the power to demolish structures that are considered to be a public nuisance. However, the law does not clarify or stipulate what due process should be observed, what planning is required, nor the level of compensation that should be provided to residents who are forcibly evicted. In Makoko, buildings — including homes — have been constructed on and along key drainage channels, creating environmental hazards that lead to flooding when heavy rains hit. For Morka, while this environmental issue is a key concern, he believes the law grants the government too far too much leeway: “It makes the government immune to public action; you can’t even sue for compensation,” he says.
Moving forward
SERAC is one of a set of human rights organizations working with Makoko community leaders and membership to organize and create a voice capable of reacting to the violence and disempowerment. Through a series of activities, the community aims to address the government’s actions and their legal claims to ownership, as well as revitalize their space to demonstrate its value and potential for the city and the city’s economy. Individuals’ ownership and title to land remains in question, but perhaps collectively the community can demonstrate its essential value, and secure its place and formal recognition as a location of worth that should be protected and respected.
The first step is a legal one. SERAC is working on behalf of the community of Makoko to litigate the matter in court — both the court of Lagos State, as well as that of the regional Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) court. “We have four or five cases in court to challenge [the land use] law and its provisions,” Morka says, but working through the court system presents its own challenges. In some instances, he explains, the courts may be very protective of the state and its intended action, or the action (demolition) may already be completed before the issue can be taken up in court. “When [a structure or a community] gets destroyed before you even can notify the court, then there’s nothing the court can do,” he says. “From this point of view, the people are completely isolated.”
So community members, leadership, and organizations are pursuing other, additional steps to put pressure on the government to recognize their claims to land and livelihoods. “We are mobilizing and going to the streets to protect the people,” Morka says. “[The government has made] reasonableness so difficult, so you have to take these sorts of actions.” For example, in immediate response to the demolitions, hundreds of Makoko residents staged a sit-in at the state house, forcing Governor Fashola to acknowledge and respond, at least in part, to their grievances.
Working on behalf of the community, SERAC has also formulated a petition to the World Bank. Makoko is one of nine slum communities currently being targeted by the World Bank-financed Lagos Metropolitan Development and Governance Project, a $200 million infrastructural development project aimed at extending and improving services such as health care services, access to water, electricity, and solid waste management to slum communities.
Under the project, the Lagos State Government is under contractual obligations not to carry out these forced evictions without due process and provision of adequate compensation. According to this agreement, Morka says, “(the demolition exercise) was an abrogation of contract and the bank’s policies.”
Cultural elements are another strand through which organizations are working with the local community to improve the community space and build citywide recognition of Makoko. The first idea, already in the works, is for a photo exhibition demonstrating the community as a place of peace, cultural value, and tourism potential, as well as a music concert and a community revitalization project.
Morka believes Makoko can be transformed into a tourist destination, but the local community, its people, and its inherent character are the roots through which the waterfront tourism can flourish. “[There is] beauty, culture, diversity, and a really amazing spirit comprised here,” Morka says.
Laying out the intent for the photo exhibition, Morka says: “We want to show the faces of the women and the men in their various occupations as people who are contributing to the economy of Lagos and of Nigeria. We are trying to show just the pure beauty of Makoko.” In addition, the photo exhibition would be linked to a global postcard campaign. Turning the photos from the exhibition into postcards, people from around the world could mail the Lagos Governor to convince him to stop the destruction of the community.
The community would also host a social forum and music concert, converting open community space into a cultural scene with music and performances. In addition, plans are also in place to start a community-led revitalization of the community. “The community is determined and ready to collaborate with the government and other entities to seek a holistic regeneration of the community,” Morka says.
For now, the people of Makoko continue to work to clean up their community space following the demolition. In clearing out rubbish, planting flowers, and refurbishing houses, businesses and other buildings, Morka says the community is hard at work to repair the community and to make it better than it was before.
Together, these actions aim to demonstrate the potential and the value of the community of Makoko. “It’s a way to acknowledge this is a community, a people. It can’t just be destroyed like that.”