Dr. Bassey, Nigeria’s leading environmental advocate, a past two-time chairman of Friends of the Earth International (FoE), winner of the Rights Livelihood Award (aka the Alternative Nobel Prize), 2010, a Time Magazine’s ‘Hero of the Environment’ winner (2009), Rafto Prize for Human Rights awardee (2012), a University of York, England and York University, Canada’s honorary doctorate awardee, a Wallenberg global medalist (University of Michigan, USA), 2024 and a Member of the Order of the Federal Republic (MFR) among several others, is a personification of generosity. He has awarded educational scholarships to several Makoko children over the years.

A trained architect, he is perennially fascinated by the traditional architecture of the community in addition to the climatic resilience for which the famous community is known right from his first visit in 2014. He has befriended many of the local chiefs, youth leaders and children in the community. Last February 2024, he launched his newest book, ‘Seeing the Invisible’, a poetry collection, at CEE-HOPE’s community/Youth ICT centre in Makoko

MAKOKO, a community aged over a hundred years, more than one hundred thousand residents, West Africa largest of its type and the ‘world biggest floating city’ is best known for a number of things– its traditional architecture and fishes. And of course the now defunct world famous floating school.

Fishes. Oh, the fishing trade is right at the centre of the community– fishermen venturing into the high seas in the quest for fish/sea foods fetching livelihoods, women making a living through the selling of fresh water fishes of all varieties, sea food of all sorts, smoked fishes, roasted or cooked as pepper soup– all sold to salivating customers trooping from far and wide.

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And, of course, wooden houses built in close proximity to the water bodies in climate-resilient culture. A unique community whose potentials, capital ought to be harnessed and which should be upgraded and turned into a tourist hub, a traditional enclave symbolic of inclusion and cultural conservation in a truly resilient mega city, is now being targeted for complete erasure to make way for big, private interests in close cahoots with a government which should protect the most vulnerable and project tourism gems such as Makoko. Lost homes, lost culture, lost history and dispossessed dreams.

In summary, the Makoko Fish Market is the biggest of its kind in Lagos and one of the biggest in Africa.

Recently, as a sign of solidarity to the community which is currently under the siege of the aforementioned illegal and violent state-sanctioned forced eviction exercise, Dr. Nnimmo Bassey, frontline environmentalist and Executive Director of Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), stopped over at the fish market. It’s one of his favourite spots at Makoko and he ensures he visits it on almost all his visits. A trained architect, he is perennially fascinated by the traditional architecture of the community in addition to the climatic resilience for which the famous community is known right from his first visit in 2014. He has befriended many of the local chiefs, youth leaders and children in the community. Last February 2024, he launched his newest book, ‘Seeing the Invisible’, a poetry collection, at CEE-HOPE’s community/Youth ICT centre in Makoko.

Dr. Bassey, Nigeria’s leading environmental advocate, a past two-time chairman of Friends of the Earth International (FoE), winner of the Rights Livelihood Award (aka the Alternative Nobel Prize), 2010, a Time Magazine’s ‘Hero of the Environment’ winner (2009), Rafto Prize for Human Rights awardee (2012), a University of York, England and York University, Canada’s honorary doctorate awardee, a Wallenberg global medalist (University of Michigan, USA), 2024 and a Member of the Order of the Federal Republic (MFR) among several others, is a personification of generosity. He has awarded educational scholarships to several Makoko children over the years. Through his facilitation, a Makoko youth and former community coordinator of CEE-HOPE, Miss Titi Ajimuda represented Nigeria at the Youth Ocean Conference in Norway as one of the speakers in both the 2024 and 2025 editions. Other residents have also traveled abroad for trainings and conferences in same manner, eg to South Africa, Ghana and others. His organisation HOMEF has also facilitated several development and empowerment programs for the community including via Fishnet Alliance, a group he co-founded to amplify the voices of fisher folks in fishing communities across Nigeria and many many parts of Africa.

So far, in response to the recent attack on the community, Dr. Bassey’s NGO HOMEF has provided huge relief packages in terms of food and other emergency supplies to hundreds of residents especially women and children, and recently also, emergency housing accommodation arrangements for some of the most vulnerable persons sleeping out in the open eg women with newborn babies.

And oh, he chats with and patronises the fish sellers on each visit too. But the recent visit to the fish market was a sober one: some of the fish sellers had had their roofs taken off their heads and were sleeping in their shops some with their children, all fallouts of the brutal demolition exercise in which more than 30,000 people have been displaced and more than 10,000 buildings including schools, clinics, worship places and business premises have been pulled down. About 12 residents, mostly very young children, are also reported dead, most of them from teargas fired at the unarmed residents by armed security personnel attached to the demolition squad.

Indeed, a crude and ilegal demolition, one done in flagrant disregard of an existing court restriction order/ruling, a raising of a fattened middle finger at laid down local and international protocols around urban redevelopment which prescribe adequate consultation, relocation and compensation plans. The poor and oppressed of Makoko, Oworonshoki, Precious Seeds, Otumara, Ayetoro, Baba-Ilaje and many others in the recent and ongoing savage forced eviction spree across Lagos are not deemed human enough to be extended the rights and privileges of the policies that pointedly recommends humane handling of persons to be affected by such redevelopment/urbanisation projects, with minimal harm (not to mention that those humans’ votes are harvested every election year by same state government/political elites of the ruling party to oil their political ambition machinery).

And the environmentalist has also been unsparing in his criticism of the state Government whose handling of Makoko and other informal communities in Lagos he compares to attacks by bandits prevalent in other parts of the country. “These latest attacks on vulnerable populations and the urban poor is the most violent manifestation of Lagos State government’s contempt for those it views as human scrap to be cleared for elite profit and at the pleasure of land speculators and the rich… This campaign of land-grabbing and displacement is repugnant and must be halted,” he said in a recent press statement.

And FYI, the so-called safety regulation talk by the government as a reason for the demolition is a mere smokescreen: the demolition has gone beyond 400 metres into Makoko whereas the Ministry of Urban Development claimed it was 100 metres, then the governor claimed another figure: 250 metres. At the centre of the entire drama is a prototype of the FBT Coral Estate, a 50-hectare luxury estate projected to take over the Makoko and Ilaje (Bariga) waterfronts after hundreds of thousands of people have been crudely ‘disposed of’. No law. No humanity. Just selfish interest, a cracking re-echo of Maroko.

Thanks so much, my boss, Nnimmo Bassey for speaking truth to power and for consistently amplifying the voices of the voiceless.

Now, Lagos, let the urban poor breathe.

* Betty Abah, journalist, social worker, is founder CEE Hope