‘They told us to leave. They didn’t tell us where to go’: the demolitions destroying homes and lives in Lagos

Residents say they now live in an atmosphere of grief and fear. That fear has driven some to dismantle their own structures to avoid the possible destruction of their personal possessions when the excavators return. “I am now soliciting funds to dismantle my school, rent a canoe and move the planks to another location, which I have yet to secure, to avoid the government destroying them when they get to this place,” says Rodrick Ayinde Oluwatosin, 31, proprietor of the Potential Children school.

Video caption: Makoko before and after Demolition

By Valentine Benjamin

IT was 12.30pm when amphibious excavators escorted by armed police roared through Makoko, crushing wooden shacks built on stilts. “It was the second time this year,” says Augustine Agpoko, 42, a fisher and father of eight whose six-bedroom bungalow was demolished on 16 January.

Like many of his neighbours, Agpoko was already dismantling his home piece by piece in an attempt to save some of the materials before the machines arrived. “I was removing my roofing sheets, trying to salvage materials from my house when the bulldozers began demolition,” he says. “When they started firing tear gas into the air, I had to quickly evacuate my family to safety in a neighbouring community, because one of my two wives is in her second trimester.”

By the time he returned, everything had been reduced to floating debris on the Lagos Lagoon. “They later set everything ablaze, including my fishing nets,” he says.

Agpoko was born and raised in Makoko. He says his children have not been able to attend school since the demolitions began in December. During an operation on 21 December, the excavators arrived under cover of darkness. At first, Makoko residents thought the low metallic hum vibrating across the lagoon was a distant generator or the rumbling of trucks on the nearby Third Mainland Bridge. But when the sky began to brighten, they saw excavators advancing towards the wooden structures of the waterfront settlement.

“It was before dawn,” says 60-year-old Timothy Ategi, a fisher who has lived in Makoko all his life. “You could hear the machines before you could see them.”

Makoko – Nigeria’s largest informal waterfront community – has existed for more than a century. It is estimated that up to 300,000 people live there. Built on stilts and shaped by fishing routes, canoe transport and lagoon trade, it is a community designed to live with water.

But in recent weeks residents have watched as homes that have stood for generations, schools and businesses, have been reduced to splinters, displacing hundreds of people.

Today, the lagoon water is still littered with planks of wood, pieces of corrugated zinc sheets and drifting canoes, with mattresses, cooking utensils and fragments of fishing nets piled along the edges.

The Lagos government describes the demolition as part of its essential sanitation and security efforts aimed at ensuring the residents are safe from the hazards posed by a high-voltage power line. Locals say they were given little warning and nowhere to go.

It is not the first time sections of Makoko have been demolished by the authorities. In 2005 and 2012, parts of the settlement were razed with little prior notice, leaving thousands homeless and prompting domestic and international condemnation.

During the December demolitions, government forces used teargas, say waterfront residents, which they allege led to the deaths of five people.

Gboyega Akosile, special adviser on media and publicity to the Lagos state governor, says the state government was not aware of the alleged deaths but would refer them to the appropriate authorities for due process

“We’d investigate and determine the actual cause of death. The government has been carrying out enforcement in many areas, on different issues, for years,” says Akosile. “Our personnel will not knowingly kill anybody. It’s not as if they shot at people or massacred people.”

Ategi was at an early morning church service on 21 December when he heard the engines. From the church’s doorway, he watched security officers advance as excavators tore into nearby homes. By the time he rushed back, his house, built by his father and repaired by his sons, had been flattened. His nets were buried under rubble. His wife, a fish smoker, had lost her smoking shed, too.

“When your house is pulled down into the water, it disappears quickly. You cannot pick your life back up,” he says. “Living on the water feels like a job for many of us because our lives depend on it. But now, everything has been taken away.”

In Makoko, homes and livelihoods coexist. Nets are repaired, fish are smoked, canoes are carved and children are taught. But the recent demolition has broken this coexistence.

Emmanuel Shemede, traditional head of the waterfront community, says the government did not honour a verbal agreement to remove structures up to 100 metres from the high-voltage power line. “The government, through Gbolahan Oki, the permanent secretary of the Lagos state office of urban development, approached us about [demolishing buildings] up to 100 metres [from the power line] , but betrayed us with the destruction of structures within more than 200 meters distance from the power line.”

The Guardian contacted the office of urban development for comment but received no response.

Isa Sanusi, executive director of Amnesty International Nigeria, says the Makoko demolitions represent a serious human rights violation. “What the Lagos government has done is a deliberate disregard of international human rights standards, depriving people of their shelter and rendering them homeless,” he says.

In Makoko, women who once used rows of smoking racks, preserving fish caught at dawn and selling them into Lagos’s vast food markets, have lost their livelihoods. Fish smoking is a female-dominated, labour-intensive process that is crucial to household survival.

“I am well-known for this work,” says 40-year-old Elizabeth Peter, who learned the skill from her mother. “They destroyed it as though. it meant nothing.

• People salvage wood and belongings from the debris. Some say they have had to start sleeping on boats

Without the smoking sheds, fish spoil quickly, cutting off income and driving many families deeper into poverty. Women describe the demolitions as a “crushing blow” to their families’ survival, leaving them unsure how to restart businesses that depend on proximity to water, firewood and fishing routes.

“What happened to us here is far from poverty,” Peter says. “It is humiliation.”

Residents accuse the state government of serving the interests of property developers and elite investors who, they say, want to replace their community with luxury high-rise buildings and condominiums. In a 2012 letter the government says the densely populated settlement undermines the “megacity status” of Lagos, according to a BBC report.

They say they woke up to the demolitions with barely any notice. Some recall that the few notices given were vague and irregularly distributed.

“They told us to leave,” says Prophet Dona Gansvou, a religious leader who lost his church to the wreckage. “They didn’t tell us where to go.

* Prophet Dona Gansvou, left, a religious leader whose churchwas destroyed and Francis Sopo, 22, a fiser, at the  siteof his former home

Residents say they now live in an atmosphere of grief and fear. That fear has driven some to dismantle their own structures to avoid the possible destruction of their personal possessions when the excavators return. “I am now soliciting funds to dismantle my school, rent a canoe and move the planks to another location, which I have yet to secure, to avoid the government destroying them when they get to this place,” says Rodrick Ayinde Oluwatosin, 31, proprietor of the Potential Children school.

There is no clear plan for resettlement. Community leaders say no compensation has been paid. A few families have headed inland to stay with relatives; others remain among the debris. Several residents say they have started sleeping on boats.

Akosile insists Makoko sits on illegal land, but does not address questions about compensation or alternative housing.

Sanusi argues that the government must take responsibility for the losses and impose a moratorium on mass evictions until there is clarity and some easing of people’s economic hardship. “The government should set up a panel of inquiry to investigate what happened and ensure that all those responsible for destroying homes, medical centres and places of worship are brought to justice.”

Makoko’s destruction reveals a troubling paradox. Lagos, a low-lying coastal city facing growing risks from flooding and sea level rise, is dismantling one of its communities best adapted to life on the water.

“There is a need for serious consultation and meaningful engagement between the government and important stakeholders living along the coastline,” says Dr Abisoye Eleshin, a research fellow at the Institute of African and Diaspora Studies at the University of Lagos, who specialises in Indigenous adaptation.

“The government should formalise the idea of allowing these people to live in a way that aligns with the city’s stated ideology of being climate friendly and water adaptive.”

Processes such as displacement and gentrification affect far more than just physical structures, he argues. “They affect the entire living cycle, including the cultural and adaptive systems of the people. They alter their living standards, which in turn affects the intergenerational transfer of livelihoods and the kind of generational transformation we expect for these communities.”

* https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/jan/26/lagos-waterfront-demolition-makoko-displacement

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