Life interrupted: the residual effects of a community uprooted

Just off the Lekki-Epe Expressway, where the paved roads turn to dirt and fragmented rock, the noise of the bustling city subsides. The sounds of construction and business give way to the gentle hum of people chatting and the waves of the Lagos Lagoon hitting the shore.

As Elijah Atinkpo surveyed the vast expanse of muddy, white sand before him, a look of dismay crept across his face. His usually cheery demeanor vanished as he walked further into the barren land, following the remnant tire tracks of the machinery that is slowly sand-filling the lagoon where he once lived.

“No, no, no, no,” he said, growing visibly distraught. “I can’t really identify because it’s really, really confusing.”

“I’m trying to identify my house – my family house,” he said, spinning in slow circles, his eyes scanning the emptiness around him for where his house used to be.

“This used to be our place. This used to be where we lived. And the government came. They turned us out. They hurt my people. They killed them.”

It’s the first time Elijah has set foot on the land of Otodo Gbame, since he was forcefully evicted on April 9, 2017.

Charming and confident, with an easy grace about him, Elijah is a 22-year-old who aspires to attend film school in the United States, and dreams of one day opening his own film studio in Lagos. He radiates joy when he talks about his vision of combining his passions – filmmaking and his community – to tell relatable stories that weave in their history and culture. To him, there is no nobler pursuit in life than to learn and to put a smile on the faces of others. 

While his personality and ambition suggest a young man on the cusp of achieving his dreams, the reality of his circumstances provides a much darker contrast.

It has been nearly a year and a half since Elijah was startled awake in the hours before dawn as police came through land and water, wielding tear gas and guns, scattering thousands of residents and setting homes on fire. Since then, Elijah’s life has been turned upside down – his economic stability strained, his journey for education halted and his home life shattered.

However, Elijah’s story is not unique. He is one of nearly 30,000 people for whom life has been irrevocably altered by the forced eviction of Otodo Gbame.

From November 2016 to April 2017, the Otodo Gbame community endured a series of evictions by the state government – despite an injunction by the Lagos State high-court - that resulted in the death of several community members and the displacement of the nearly 30,000 others.

The demolition of the community followed a declaration by State Governor Akinwunmi Ambode a month earlier, to demolish all waterfront informal settlements in Lagos.

However, a spokesman for the state quickly denied any government involvement in the initial razing of the community, issuing a statement that: “While the Otodo Gbame shanties clearly fell within the prime waterfront areas where Lagos State Government would prefer to have better development, befitting of a prime area in a megacity, it was mindful of the fundamental rights of the various residents living in the area.”

Ultimately, authorities did return to Otodo Gbame several times in the following months to carry out the evictions. But residents and local activists say the driving force behind this eviction is not the government but a local royal family – the Elegushis – who are developing the land for commercial use.

One of the farthest-reaching effects of the eviction is the disruption of residents’ economic stability.

“Generally, forced evictions push people that are already usually quite poor, into deeper poverty,” said Andrew Maki, a co-director of the Justice & Empowerment Initiatives (JEI), a nongovernmental organization that supports informal communities throughout Lagos.

Otodo Gbame – which in the local Egun language translates to ‘houses built on a swamp’ – was a fishing community favorably situated on the coast of Lekki Peninsula, a burgeoning city in Lagos State.  

Each day, the men in the community would go out on their boats and harvest fish from the extensive traps they built into the bottom of the lagoon. In turn, when the men arrived returned to the community, the women would clean and take the fish to local markets, providing a steady source of income for the family.

Immediately following the evictions, the Otodo Gbame community felt the economic impact through the loss of many of their boats and supplies during the destruction of their community.

However, the evictees are still reeling from the impact of the eviction because their relocations have not all been to suitable waterfront communities that can support their fishing livelihood to the same extent.

In an as-yet-unpublished study by Junior Researcher Rebecca Enobong Roberts and Dr. Ogochukwu Okanya, a senior lecturer of economics at the Institute of Management & Technology, Enugu - 850 households from Otodo Gbame were surveyed about the effects of the eviction.

Of the sampled population, 93 percent reported they are still without income, almost a year after the eviction.

Of those same households, 89 percent report they are still homeless – a side effect of the financial strain caused by the eviction.

For Elijah, it’s a hard reality he faces every day. Since the eviction, he has not been able to resettle and instead squats with friends throughout Lagos, his location changing each day depending on where his day takes him.

One place he frequents – a small, concrete room just big enough to fit a full-sized bed and a short armoire – often shelters nearly 10 men in a night. Depending on who shows up each night, four or five will sleep on the bed and the rest organize themselves with foam pads on the floor like Tetris pieces.

“We are like family … we are very caring, and we support each other,” Elijah said.

“Sometimes if you want to go out and maybe one of us does not have transport, another person can just give the person the transport fees. We support each other in terms of food. We used to cook among us and trust me, they cook delicious food and it’s amazing.”

As for work, Elijah takes up odd jobs wherever he can find them – filming and editing videos, designing graphics and flyers, and photographing events.

Although it is a stressful and chaotic lifestyle, Maki said it’s a reality for much of the population.

“Lagosians are hustlers - the people that know how to survive, right? Because you have to know how to survive to live in Lagos,” said Maki.

“And when the government takes away all of your worldly possessions, and against all odds, somehow, many people still have found a way.”

The displacement of residents from Otodo Gbame, compounded by an increased financial burden, has also created chaos for many of the community’s youth in their path for education.

According to Roberts and Okanya’s study, 63 percent of the sampled households had children attending school before the eviction. Now, none of those previously enrolled children are in school – representing the severe decline in access to education post-eviction.

“On one side there are children no longer going to the schools that got demolished or no longer being close enough to the schools they attended,” said Maki.

“I think on the other side, and for many of the same children, a part now have to work to support their families, even though they’re children themselves, and going into whatever economic activity they can.”

In general, evictees from Otodo Gbame say their current circumstances are just not conducive to a proper education for the school-age children.

Michael Awanse taught class six at Topgoodness Nursery and Primary School in Otodo Gbame until his eviction. Now, he teaches three different class levels at a makeshift school building in Badore, a community in Ajah that is hosting some of the evictees.

As a teacher, Awanse said he witnesses the struggles faced by students every day and said it has created a stressful environment.

“Teaching in Otodo Gbame, we have a school, we have classrooms, but here we don’t have any,” said Awanse.

“And there, the children, they are confident, they are with their parents … but here some are with other people and no money to take good care of them. So, life here cannot be compared with the one in Otodo Gbame.”

The effects of the eviction on education extends beyond the children in primary and secondary school and has also affected the ability of young adults, like Elijah, to pursue higher education because of the steep tuition fees or limited access to institutions.

Before the evictions, 23 year-old Tina Edukpo was attending a graphic design school but has since dropped out because of the evictions.

“I cannot attend anymore because it is too far away and too expensive to travel to,” she said. “If I could afford the travel I would surely go back.”

Kunnu Paul, a schoolteacher from Otodo Gbame said the lack of education for evictees is having a negative impact on the youth and their future.

“It’s taking away their hope,” said Paul. “Because without school, this generation, they cannot have good jobs, they cannot do well.”

While the burdens of the forced eviction manifest themselves most often in struggles for education and financial stability, they also affect the strength of the community as a social network and place of belonging.

“The social cohesion of the community gets splintered, all of your social networks get ripped apart,” said Maki.

“It’s like detonating a bomb – the community is just in shards everywhere.”

As the evictions happened, the confusion and fear among the community sent people scrambling, with many families accidentally separating as they tried to flee. Although many of the families located their loved ones in the days and weeks following, the eviction has ultimately split families for good.

Now, the nearly 30,000 displaced people from Otodo Gbame are being hosted in at least 12 different communities, scattered across the state.

Maki explained that part of the reason these evictions damage the community so permanently is because families and friends are separated by a distance that is difficult to travel due to poor infrastructure that makes it time-consuming and costly.

Edukpo’s family was one of many that had to resettle in different communities after the eviction. Now, she lives with one of her sisters in Apapa and said she only gets to visit the rest of her family every few months.

“It makes me feel so sad,” she said. “Because we cannot be together to spend time as a family.”

For Elijah’s family, Maki’s statement also rings true. After the eviction, his parents, several siblings and his nieces and nephews fled to another property his parents own in Sejlo Village, Ikorodu. However, Elijah could not relocate with them because they are too far from the mainland where he finds most of his work now in odd jobs.

Elijah’s mother said it can often be several weeks between visits from her son and she’s never sure of where he is or how he is doing.

“I miss him,” said Elijah’s mother, Josephine Atinkpo. “Especially when I am cooking a good meal, I wonder about him. I don’t know his condition, I don’t know if he has eaten, I’m just worried about him.”

In June of last year, the residents of Otodo Gbame claimed a small victory when a Lagos High high-court judge ruled the government-ordered evictions unconstitutional because the residents were not provided with plans for resettlement or compensation.

However, the Lagos State Government immediately appealed the verdict, arguing in a statement that there were no demolitions before the case was filed. Additionally, the statement argued that although the Constitution provides non-absolute land rights, the structures in Otodo Gbame were without requisite building permits and the “Constitution does not permit breach of a law.”

While the case continues in court, a process that Maki says could take several more years, activists and residents from Otodo Gbame continue to hold demonstrations and seek assistance from groups like JEI.

Although the court rulings have halted waterfront community evictions for now, Maki says the future for Otodo Gbame residents, and those of other riverine communities, will likely just be a continuing cycle of evictions.

“One thing that you would hear if you spent a long time in Lagos … you would find people who could tell you a story of how they were evicted three or four times, from one community to the next,” said Maki.

“Evictions are a part of the culture of Lagos, regrettably.”

Despite a future that looks bleak on paper, many of the residents of Otodo Gbame have not given up hope on returning to their homeland.

“Our belief is we’ll be there, that’s my own belief. I know we’ll soon get there,” said Awanse.

“We have hope that we will be able to return to the community,” said Edukpo.

“The struggle for Otodo Gbame is one that is built on kind of endless optimism and hope for a different future and I think that’s what made it as successful as it has been,” said Maki.

Standing in the remnants of Otodo Gbame, Elijah stilled, no longer looking for his home, no longer recognizing the land where he was born and raised.

His look of distress gave way to anguish. Silently, he wandered over to a small pool that had formed in the sand, squatting down to run his hand over the shells that lined the edge. The silence lasted for what felt like hours, punctuated only by the occasional bird squawking.

Elijah stared into the pool at his feet, contemplating all that happened in Otodo Gbame until that moment – the two decades he spent there with family and friends, the wonderful memories he made growing up, and the days in which it all came crashing down.

After a while, he stood and stared across the stretch before him, finally breaking the silence. 

“It’s very, very painful,” he said. “And this pain lives with me here.

“And I’m very sure that, at some point, we are going to return here, and we are going to fight for our people - to make sure that we get justice. And justice will prevail.”

For additional reporting on Elijah and the struggles faced by the Otodo Gbame community, watch the short documentary, "Return a King," created by Dan Order with co-reporting by Kaitlin Englund.