CHIBUIKE CHUKWU
Since the commencement of the demolition of properties at Abule Ado area of Lagos State, otherwise called FESTAC 2 of Lagos, several arguments have been advanced on what actually prompted such action from the Lagos State Government and the Federal Housing Authority (FHA).
In a place populated by Igbos with edifices worth hundreds of billions of naira, buildings numbering over 600, FHA marked many buildings for demolition, giving reasons for contraventions to include, false or incomplete documentation, or inappropriate location of the buildings.
Mr. Akintola Olagbemiro, the FHA’s South-West Zonal Manager, said precisely on November 17, the FHA had released a statement on plans to demolish 677 houses, while 744 others were marked to be partially demolished over infringement by a developer in Phase 2, Festac Town, Amuwo-Odofin area of Lagos State.
During an assessment visit to the affected area before the exercise, Olagbemiro said despite letters and stakeholders’ meetings, the developers had continued to build on the swampy land without meeting the requirements.
“After so many years of trying to get into the property belonging to FHA, which we labelled as Festac Phase 2. There has been encroachment and illegal development and it’s turning the place into a slum.
“We are trying to see how best we can resolve it and make people live in a more serene environment. Unfortunately, there have been cases of illegal developers and land grabbers.”
Similarly, the Deputy General Manager, FHA, Urban and Regional Planning, Southwest, Francisca Michael-James, was quoted as saying before the bulldozers descended on the structures; “We have given the residents several notices but to our surprise, works were still going on, without regard to the law.
“Now we have the permission of our management and we will ask for security backup and start enforcement. We will start removing structures from the roads and those on setbacks of pipelines.
“We’ll also remove the buildings constructed after the stakeholders’ meetings where we agreed that everyone should wait until we are done with our assessment but some of them continued to build and concluded that we will regularise, but regularisation is not automatic. Now, the ones that did not meet regularisation will have to go.”
However, from the landlords and tenants of the newly developed area, it has been one lamentation or the other with so many of them linking the exercise to the outcome of the last presidential election in Lagos State where the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) was demystified in the state their presidential candidate once threaded as a colossus.
For instance, one Okechukwu Ibe, a brother to one of the victims of Abule- Ado demolition, while in a chat with our correspondent said: “I have been living here with my brother for so many years now. We (referring to Igbos) developed this place. This place was just no place and inaccessible until we decided to come in because it is very close to our place of business.
“They sold the lands to us at an exorbitant amount and we filed every document they required, fulfilled all obligations and committed so much in developing Abule-Ado.
“There is nothing more than politics involved. Remember they have demolished a lot of shops even in the market (making reference to Trade Fair market located in Satellite Town).
“I heard the same thing is ongoing at the Computer Village; the question is, why now because it started after the last presidential election,” he asked.
Another house owner at Abule Ado, while in a chat with a national daily on anonymity as obtained by Daily Independent, said; “They are after us because of the last election; forget about the arguments they are putting up.
“Before the last election, they had threatened us that unless we aligned with the APC, they would make sure we leave this place.
“I think it’s about the last election and nothing more than that,” said the man whose apartment was leveled.
But such an argument was countered by one Mr. Ayodele Wasiu, who was quoted as regretting that his own apartment and those belonging to people from virtually all parts of the country were brought down.
“I don’t think there is any such thing like targeting the Igbos,” he said to a national daily.
“My House was brought down and it is hard to bear. I know a man from Kogi State who was affected. I also know a man from the far north who is still in hospital till now because his house was demolished.
“Unless there is something I don’t know, this is not about Igbos or any tribe for that matter. Yes, Igbos have the majority of the houses demolished but it affected everyone,” he said.
However, despite several reasons put up for the demolition in parts of the state which mostly affected the Igbos, not a few Nigerians believe that the exercises are the offshoot of the last election where the APC performed abysmally in the areas dominated by the people of the South East.
But if the political undertone theory for the demolitions is right, then Lagos State and the ruling APC should consider few lessons from abroad on political affiliations and how not to embark on vendetta just because a political stronghold was lost.
In the United States of America, for example, blacks were initially not allowed to vote. After the embargo was lifted, they aligned themselves with the Republican but it was a short-lived affair.
It all started when African-American men first obtained the right to vote after the passage of the 15th Amendment in 1870 and they nearly all identified and supported the Republican Party and its candidates, rewarding the party for its commitment to ending slavery and expanding black civil rights.
However, as political power was gradually returned to Southern Democrats, in part through the 1877 compromise which resolved the disputed 1876 presidential election, African Americans, who at this time nearly all resided in Southern states, were once again stripped of their voting rights.
The denial to vote was in force until the early 20th century, following the large-scale migration of African Americans to Northern cities in search of employment and refuge from the repressive Jim Crow policies of the South, when it was reneged.
It was only when the Democratic Party took up the mantle of Civil Rights in the mid to late 1960’s and ensured the abolition of black segregation that black support for the party coalesced into the reliability and all the blacks aligned with them.
This partisan loyalty was and still is maintained through a strategic social process called ‘racialized social constraint, whereby support for the Democratic Party has come to be defined as a norm of group behavior.
In other words, then and now, supporting the Democratic Party has come to be understood as just something you do as a black person, an expectation of behavior meant to empower the racial group.
Consequently, African Americans are Democrats. Since 1968 no Republican presidential candidate has received more than 13% of the African American vote and surveys of African Americans regularly show that upwards of 80% of African Americans self-identify as Democrats. According to political scientist Tasha Philpot in one of his books, African Americans are “Conservative but Not Republican.”
Meanwhile, research shows that in the United States, majority of African Americans live in 10 states while New York and Chicago are cities with the largest black population, leading to the survey and recent census that about 6 in 10 people there are blacks (Commerce Department’s Census Bureau).
The survey listed the 10 states where 60 percent of African Americans resided as New York, California, Texas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina, Maryland, Michigan and Louisiana. Five of these had more than 2 million Blacks each: New York, California, Texas, Florida and Georgia.
Like earlier noted, blacks in America are Democrats and would almost always identify with any candidate put up by the Democratic Party.
In the last election that threw up Joe Biden as the President of the United States (POTUS), the president and his party (Democratic Party) lost in seven of the ten states where they hitherto had advantage.
For the records and in the presidential contest, President Biden lost in Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Louisiana, South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi, to Donald Trump of the Republican. To followers of election trends in the United States, it was a surprising result given that the black-dominated areas had always supported Democratic Party.
Coming down to Nigeria and just like the United States, the APC was defeated in its strongest stronghold state in the last presidential election. Fielding the former Lagos State governor as its flag bearer, the APC was expected (and understandably too) to have a landslide in the state Tinubu once superintended but the Labour Party rather had a landslide (as results from the PDP situation room gave LP more than 900,000 votes in the state), with majority of the votes allegedly coming from Igbo-dominated areas who choose Peter Obi of Labour Party instead.
However, no sooner had the election ended than the state government and the Federal Housing Authority, according to Okechukwu Ibe, realised that Abule-Ado and other areas preoccupied mainly by the Igbos and their businesses had infractions.
“We have been here for long and lived peacefully. During campaigns, they came here and never mentioned any of those reasons they are demolishing this place.
“Now after the elections they realized the buildings here didn’t comply with this or that. This is very bad,” he told our correspondent in a chat.
If the political undertone theory is sustained, it is imperative to take a cue from the United States, where President Biden hasn’t shown any disdain towards inhabitants of the Democratic strongholds and the seven states in the presidential election. Rather he has consistently come up with policies that will influence good living condition for all Americans irrespective of colour, religion or ethnic inclination. He is seeing himself first as American with emphasis on treating everyone equal. That is the hallmark of leadership.
Also, APC should look at what led to the blacks identifying with the Democrats and abandoning the Republicans and understand that politics is all about linkages and reaching outs.
According to commentators, President Bola Tinubu is a politician imbued with metropolitan character. His administration as the governor of Lagos State between 1999 and 2007 was commended as one that accommodated all and his policies then was far-reaching, affecting all positively; thus the present scenario is raising seriously credibility issues on how he is superintending a Federal Government that has continued to treat a section of the country as second class citizens.
Also, his administration’s silence on the best way to come out of the impasse through renegotiation and compensations given that the affected landlords reportedly bought their lands legitimately, lends weight to theories that the demolitions are targeted at some sections of the country with a view to crippling their economic strength in the state.
A resident of Unity Close in Abule Ado, Anthony Okoli, as read from a national daily, said some landlords have died because of the demolition.
“I know of four landlords who died because they couldn’t bear to see the evidence of their hard work brought down. Some others have developed heart-related problems and hypertension because of this development.”
Also another resident whose name was only given as Obinna lamented that they had planned to move into his own house in December and were already furnishing it.
He revealed that his brother’s two buildings on the same street; a duplex for his family and a four-flat tenancy house were demolished.
Obinna accused the government of deception, claiming that the government accepted all the payments he made without telling him anything.
“As you can see they are new houses. The owner was about to pack in next month and I came to pack some of the furniture that we were able to remove before the house was demolished last Tuesday.
“The reason they gave for demolishing some of the buildings is that they asked them to stop work but they refused.
They bought the land legitimately and when they were building, they were paying for everything. Development fees were paid to Omo onile fee and the local government. We also paid for soil tests. The government was busy collecting the payments.
“They said their reason for demolishing some other houses was because they were not given them numbers when others were given.
“The same day they came to demolish it, we begged that we would pay N30m just for them not to demolish it, while another man begged to pay 50m. One Ngwa man had just built a very big two-storey building and even promised to give them N100m so that they wouldn’t demolish his houses but they refused.
“You can imagine pricing your own property so that they won’t demolish it. My brother bought this land when the road stopped at Beacon Light School. He bought it years ago,” he complained bitterly.
According to one Mr. Ifeanyichukwu Okezie, one of affected landlords at Abule Ado, while speaking to a national daily, said that he purchased his land from appropriate authorities and ensured all his documents were right.
Okezie noted that if there was need to effect demolition, there should be adequate compensation, given that almost every landlord bought his or her land rightly.
“I have my documents here. I didn’t cut corners to get the land,” he told the national daily.
“Even when I started building, I met all the conditions as they (officials of Lagos Government) regularly come here to ask for.
“I think we should not only be giving adequate notice but we should be compensated.
“That is the only way they can prove that this is not about the last election in Lagos State,” he said.
Meanwhile, Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, the president of Ohaneze Ndigbo Worldwide, earlier called for compensation to victims of the demolished properties.
Speaking when he took an inspection tour of the demolished property, Iwuanyanwu said although land in the country is vested in the government and it could repossess any for the construction of infrastructure in overriding public interest, the owners of the property repossessed should be well compensated.
He wondered why the government did not mark the buildings demolished as illegal structures while they were under construction and noted that it was an act of bad faith for those involved to wait for the structures to be completed before demolishing them.
He confirmed that the Igbo landlords in the affected areas bought the land from the original and indigenous owners and were issued receipts thus, the government should have given them due consideration and compensation before the demolition.
“Some of these people have invested all they have in those property, some children went to school in the morning only to come back in the evening to discover that they are homeless,” he said.
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