The first impulsive response this writer expects from readers on account of the above headline is a stream of coercive, corrosive and debasing abuses. It is not unexpected because it is becoming an inevitable component of our collective DNA to leap before we look, wittingly or unwittingly.
The motivation to pen this piece was engendered by the brouhaha that greeted the demolition of the Police Officers Wives Association (POWA) shopping complex in Ikeja – Lagos. The staccato of voices for and against the demolition is understandable and on both sides of the divide, emotions were utilised to the optimum. In matters of this nature in a country like ours, whipping up sentiments along our national fault lines becomes a veritable article of trade.
For those with an averagely marketable sense of discernment, the most viable developmental instruments ever deployed in the democratic government of the Fourth Republic Nigeria is demolition. Take it or leave it, Fourth Republic Nigeria has witnessed more demolitions than construction. More resources have been deployed to the “demolition department” and effectively utilised and the cost of such demolitions so deployed make those appropriated for construction to pale into insignificance. You can take that to the bank!
As if it is in the modus operandi of the demolition exercise, there are two processes to it: the caterpillars, bulldozers and excavators are moved in to do the jobs for the government. Atiporome, a sprawling rural community on the Lagos – Badagry expressway presents a picturesque and classical example of the process. In an operation that would have made the activities of the German State Secret Police (GESTAPO) of the Nazi era look like an episode in Tom and Jerry, or Sesame Street, the best among the best of armed forces were deployed to escort the earth-moving machines to level the community. The quake and rumbles of the bulldozers were so loud, that this writer got a call from his elder brother in far away Benin City to enquire if his sanity was still intact.
It is instructive to note that on the levelled rubbles of the wreckages of what was once Atiporome today sits an estate built for police personnel named after President Muhammadu Buhari still remains unoccupied more than three years after it was commissioned. This is the first of the demolition exercises orchestrated to free up space for further development.
Tejuosho market on the Yaba axis of Lagos State presents an example of the second process. The market was popular for more reasons than one. However, the market had become an eyesore in the view of the authorities who envision a modern Lagos, but to get the traders out was an uphill task. Don’t forget that Tejuosho markets sits within the precincts of Iddo, the popular train and buses terminals of Lagos State. All primordial and primeval theories, arguments, theses and hypotheses were thrown at the table in favour and against what should be done to the market and the processes to achieve it. And a giant inferno that would have made hell fire look like a cigar lighter came and consumed the market. Note that the raging inferno did not stop to listen to the argument that the Yorubas owned more shops in the market, that the Hausas sold more foreign currency in and around the market or that the Igbos sold more second-hand materials in the market. Neither did it listen to the informed opinion of the NGOs that people’s sources of livelihood are going to be forcefully taken away from them. On the ashy remains of that inferno today sits a Tejuosho market that is a spectacle to behold and a delight to shoppers and passers-by alike.
1004 Estates on Victoria Island, Lagos, was built for members of the National Assembly of the Second Republic (1979 – 1983). While the estate represented a sprawling urban wonder at the time, the fumes from the criminality, drugs, poverty and squalor of their next-door neighbours made life unbearable for that class of Nigerians, so the Nigerian government at the time reasoned. As social media pundits used to call them, members of the GenZ or the indomie generation do not know that Maroko Sandfill was a global specimen of a sprawling urban squalor. And its closest neighbour was 1004 Estates! One day in July 1990, the military administration of Lagos State under the leadership of Gbolahan Mudashiru put Maroko under the strong chains and blades of the bulldozers. Today, being a resident or doing business in Maroko Sandfill automatically confers on you the status of a bourgeois.
This writer touches down at Iba, a community in close proximity with the main campus of the Lagos State University (LASU). At the main entrance to the community and directly facing the magnificent office of the Local Council Development Area (LCDA) stood a line of shops that could be aptly described as utterly decrepit. It is not clear what the owners of the shops intended to do with the structure that at best had become some eyesore. On a fateful day, the users of the shops came to do their businesses as usual, closed at the end of day and went home. While mortals slept, however, a wild inferno engulfed the complex and less than three years later, a gigantic structure germinated, apparently fertilized by the ashes of the old structure.
Do we still remember Mallam Nasir el-Rufai? He was the petit but vociferous Minister of the Federal Capital Territory during the administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo who also served as governor of Kaduna State during the last dispensation. el-Rufai as minister of the FCT demolished more houses than the Federal Government would ever build. He visited Abuja with so much demolition that he earned himself the sobriquet of “Mr. Original Masterplan”. Today, the new czar in town, Mr. Project, Ezenwo Nyesom Wike is threatening hailstone and brimstone on the buildings in the FCT even when he has not made any promise to build any houses.
Do we remember somebody called Abba Yusuf? He is the current governor of Kano State who was sworn in on May 29th, 2023. His first major assignment as governor was to demolish the Masallacin Eid Shops build by his predecessor, Abdullahi Ganduje. Today, he is promising to pay N3 billion compensation to the owners of the shops and it is reported that he has paid N1 billion so far.
In Edo State in 2017, Governor Godwin Obaseki only needed a beef with internally–generated revenue mandarin of the Governor Adams Oshiomhole administration, Mr. Tony Kabaka to unleash the machinery of government against him, if only to send the clear signal that he, Governor Godwin Obaseki, was not only in government, but also in power. Tony Kabaka became a pimpish image of his former boisterous self after his hotel in Benin City was demolished on the orders of the governor. It is noteworthy that at the apogee of Tony Kabaka’s “reign”, he had lions in his private residence and once loudly celebrated N1 billion personal income amassed as the unenlightened despot at the helm of Adams Oshiomhole’s internal revenue generation behemoths.
Against the background of these demolitions et al, why the vote for demolition considering the unquantifiable damages in physical and emotional assets that such exercise unleash on the victims vertically and horizontally?
In the real estate sector, there are three indices that determine the cost of tenement, they say and these are – location, location, location! Those who are familiar with the Marina waterfront in Lagos probably know a structure called Six-storey Building. It got the name from its “imposing height”. It is owned by Union Bank so it seems right to assume that the bank has a taste for heights. The current head office building of the bank is about four times higher.
Atrocious as these examples may sound, and indeed are, why then vote for demolition? Does it not amount to wasting valuable votes in a country where genuine voters’ votes hardly count? Nigerians are known to have taken residency in all the best cities of the world and living in the best and most expensive and exclusive locations. Those locations, however, did not drop from the sky. They were developed by humans whom we are no less human than as Nigerians. The only difference happens to be that there was a deliberate and systematic plan to get from here to there: where they were in the past to where they thought they should be in the future.
A search on the internet revealed that The Tower Building was the tallest building in New York in 1889. It was a 11-story structure. As of July, 2023, 45, Broad Street is the tallest building on that street in New York and it is the whole of 68-story tall. How tall is the tallest building in Nigeria? Time was when it was bandied that the tallest building in Africa is the NECOM House, the headquarters of Nigeria Telecommunications Limited (NITEL). The building then had 25 floors and carried a steel mast. It was like measuring a man’s height using his hair.
The New York example cited above is to illustrate how human development comes in phases. There will be phases for development, and the next phase will be for the improvement on the last phase and that necessitates the deconstruction and reconstruction of the achievements made during the last phase. In this wise, there will be, and there should be a lot of demolitions before a truly modern Nigeria will be achieved.
One thing that is very common about development in the real estate sector in Nigeria is being haphazard and unplanned. People just build anything, anywhere and anyhow. This happens because government has no deliberate programme to plan the development of the sector. The commonest thing is for government officials to allow any developer to develop anything, anywhere and later come to demolish such structures.
For a country that is experiencing exponential growth in the human demographics, permitting a free-reign development in the housing sector is an invitation to anarchy, now or in the future. For land economy, as in other economies, the higher the demand, the higher the price. Demand for land is high country wide. The urban centres are more stressed and stretched along this parameter. Lack of planning has therefore engendered a do-it-your-own-way model that would put the individual at loggerheads with the authorities in due course.
If Nigeria must develop and become a modern country like others around the world, one might sound like a prophet of doom to surmise that 60 percent of the buildings in the extant urban centres will not be standing as they currently are in the next century. They would have been demolished for new structures to stand in their place. A lot of buildings must be demolished for the society to develop and that is the stark reality, but the question is when and how should those demolitions take place? Another sad reality is that the actions we should take now that we leave for sometime in the future will become more expensive and more painful, hence for this writer, it is a vote for demolition.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Vincent Chuks Igbinedion is a Lagos-based educationist,.