Amidst the ongoing lock-down, Lagos State government has been going round demolishing houses, sending poor residents into the streets, rendering them homeless. And this is the era of #COVID19 lockdown worldwide. And residents are meant to stay indoors?
Confiance News gathered from Quick News on Wednesday.
Nevertheless, further investigations by Confiance News further validates the report.
“As we speak, residents of Ifelodun Street, Oke-Ira, Ogba (behind Yaya Abatan, Ogba)– men, women, children including new-born babies are being thrown into the streets, their houses being brought down by bulldozers heavily guarded by armed men including mobile police and men of the Civil Defence Corps,” Betty Abah reports.
And this is after a 48-hour notice, according to a displaced resident, Mr. Sunday Unah.
A woman in her sixties, Regina James, was in her house and on a drip due to ill-health when the demolition squad appeared. She had to be taken outside with the drip still attached.
Also, the few houses standing either have their foundations so badly dug into they may cave in any moment from now, or have heaps of excavated toxic wastes dumped in front of them such that they can’t move in or out of their houses. And that is in addition to inhaling the toxic wastes.
We know that Lagos State government has earned a global reputation for its brutal treatment of the urban poor but that it would extend this callous, anti-poor disposition to THIS VERY PERIOD is something that beats the imagination of even its harshest critics.
Last week, the famous Dustbin Estate was razed to the ground through a mysterious fire outbreak reminiscent of many of such in the past and rendering thousands of residents homeless. This week it is the turn of Ifelodun street inhabited by the struggling poor of a state with a four million housing deficit but whose attention is more of the brutal eviction than in the simple arithmetic of building of low cost housing to absolve the urban poor.
We call on the Lagos State Governor, Sanwo-Olu to please halt this wicked action. It is not only inhuman but disgraceful in the sight of a world cowering from the impacts of a global pandemic.
This action leaves a bitter taste in the mouth of any decent human that the state with the highest (and rapidly growing rate of #COVID19, about 70 percent or more or more of the national figure) in a country would prioritise the demolition of the houses of poor residents over attending to the screaming needs of the struggling masses, most of whom are languishing in lockdown-induced hunger.
(Quick News)
