GEJPosterity:
^^
This is a trite, tired, played out, stupid and ridiculous canard.

If the elites fronted by LASG want to "help" poor people have better living conditions than the shanties, then they should construct low cost housing like every other sensible country does! It's only in Nigeria that basic accommodation is treated like a privilege and not a basic human right.

The only housing constructed by any public or private developers is always targeted at upper middle class people, with prices starting from N4 million - which cleaner or driver living in a shanty can afford that? Why isn't your government starting from that basic issue before going around displacing people to create waterfront property to put in their glossy YouTube videos about the fake prosperity of Lagos? Why is the government not doing basic things like constructing drainage for Lekki Phase 1 which floods everytime a little rain falls, but supposedly it is chasing some grand megacity vision which can only be achieved by making thousands of struggling people homeless?

Have people committed some kind of crime by not being rich? Will there not always be need for drivers, cooks, cleaners, nannies and security guards? How much do these people get paid? Where in Lekki can they find affordable accommodation that will enable them to keep their jobs and maintain an honest living? Why are you avoiding this elephant in the room by talking about how shanties are bad? Who wants to stay in a shanty? Is it a thing of choice? Will everybody be a subsistence farmer in their village because you and your government don't want to fix the glaring problem of lack of reasonably priced modern accommodation in Lagos?

Go and tell the people you work for that they cannot stop poor people from all over Nigeria coming into Lagos to look for a better life, so instead of trying to bully them away by destroying their illegal settlements, you should instead construct low cost housing, fix the transport infrastructure problem and generally just do your fecking job as a government instead of looking for useless shortcuts.

It's not a crime to be poor. Poverty is not a moral failure. It is a result of circumstances. The government has a responsibility to everybody it collects taxes from, including poor drivers and cleaners living in shanty houses in Lekki Phase 1. Tell your government that its primary responsibility is not to rich property developers and ocean sandfillers. Tell them that the agency cooks and house maids working in Lekki Phase 1 are also paying income tax to the government that is not doing its job.

Tell Ambode to stop reading what he has paid journalists and social media loudmouths to write about his government. Tell him to start doing his goddamn job and stop chasing poor people.

GEJPosterity:
^^
Again, feel free to keep on burying your head in the sand by saying that "people should go back to their villages". As if this worthless platitude will ever change anything. And FYI, most of the people in question are Ogu and Ilaje people who are native to that area - Lagos IS their "village". They are more indigenous than you. If anything, they should be telling YOU to go back to wherever you come from and "hold your representative responsible".

Don't think any of these useless pseudo-ethnicist sentiments will buy you time or solve the problem. The time bomb is still ticking whether or not you want to pretend that your little middle class bourgeoisie lifestyle makes you better than other people. You may not be poor, but make no mistake, you're not rich either. You're just a few unfortunate events from being just like the people you are trying to erase. When the situation reaches boiling point, the rich people you are pretending to be a part of will leave Ikoyi with their private helicopters and leave you to your bloody fate at the hands of frustrated people. Don't think your existence is anything other than temporary and unsustainable.

As long as Nigeria is still one entity, people

And by the way, I'm from Lagos so miss me with the emotional micro-ethnic nonsense. I can see through it from 7 miles away.

tollyboy5:

You must be a lier you can't come from Lagos and tell me ilaje on ogu are lagosians we know our selves ogu people are our brothers from badagry so if they go back home they are still within the state but ilaje are not our brothers . I understand you but the situation is beyond ambodes power. though people are trooping to Lagos but don't expect Lagos to take care of every person that comes to live under bridge. its not government priority to create camp for refugees if we had good monitoring system wanderers won't be allowed to enter Lagos state they cause more crime than good

And by the way, I'm from Lagos so miss me with the emotional micro-ethnic nonsense. I can see through it from 7 miles away.

stevecantrell:
The war is on everyone who is not elite/ruling class ie middle and working class, not jjust poor people.

The sooner Lagosians understand that, the better.

GEJPosterity:




I view Lagos strictly as an economic asset, and it is being horribly mismanaged by the gang of incompetent chancers you are defending. A large immigrant population is an ASSET, and any government that fails to leverage assets and use them to generate income and wealth is a failure. Apart from the fact that Lagos has always been an immigrant city with its entire economy built on trading, the population of Lagos is a huge taxation asset and an economic bargaining chip that places Lagos ahead of the rest of the country.

When London constructed the Olympic Stadium in Westfields Park, they didn't just go in and drive people out of what was a poor and disgusting area filled with crime and misery. That's what a typically brainless Nigerian government would do, and people like you would defend them saying "look at the nice Olympic stadium that is there now. It's not by force to live in London." No, the planners created accommodation for these East Londoners and even the olympic village has been turned into subsidised housing for the previous East End residents. That area is now one of the most successful urban regeneration projects in history with a thriving local economy and increased tax receipts to the local council and the exchequer. Instead of sending in bulldozers to clear poor people and create one desolate rich man's toy, they actually incorporated the poor people into the future design of the place and look how successful it's been! Google Westfield Park in 2005 and compare it to 2015. In the space of just 10 years, an area bigger than Ikoyi has been completely turned around.

THAT is how an actual government thinks and behaves.

GEJPosterity:


They don't get it!

They think that because they have one 80k/month job on Admiralty Way and they can manage to live in Ajah, that means they are not part of the lower class. They don't understand that once the rich pricks are done driving out stilt and shanty communities to build their Orange Islands and Pink Islands, they will come for them too. Maybe it's when all the jobs are on the Island, but there is no remotely affordable accommodation closer than Abeokuta, that's when these ones will finally understand what is happening here.

This is blatant class warfare.

TheStronghold:


I definitely sympathize with those who were living in Otodo Gbame and I do think that the Lagos government should build more low income housing for people who need it because with the rate Lagos is developing, there will be more cases like this. However I disagree with with the notion that Lagos is an immigrant city. It wasn't founded on immigration like the U.S. was, it never implemented a doctrine of immigration, and it this point the only reason why it's an immigrant country is due to the headways Lagos has made in terms of leadership and development. It was abandoned by the Lagos government after the capital was moved over 25 yrs ago and they basically left all of the problems of the city and surrounding areas to the leaders of the state. Just take a look at how the stadium hasn't been touched in decades and has been left to corrode by the federal government.

If the leaders of Lagos government didn't focus and do their jobs, lagos would be a wasteland right now, and everyone would be moving to Abuja. However Lagos remained focused, and still remain the #1 destination in Nigeria because of that.

I say this to point out that the onus is on the federal government, and other states, to develop other areas (especially Abuja!!!) to create alternatives for people to seek greener pastures. Because Lagos has the smallest land mass in the country, and yet has the largest population and keeps increasing every year. This just isn't sustainable, and situations like Otodo Gbame are bound to happen when so many poor people are migrating to such a small place. Nigeria is HUGE. The Lagos govt shouldn't be burdened with carrying the country. This isn't a one state show, everyone else needs to do their part to ease the burden the Lagos govt is feeling.

Uhh, if you don't think poor people weren't driven out by that development in London, you're fooling yourself. The property prices in that area definitely sky rocketed and only the people who could afford it (i.e rich people) moved in. The thing is, with any type of development, rich people will always drive out the poor, whether it be by the federal govt or not. The only difference is how it looks when it happens. That's just a fact of life. Having lived in America for many years, I've seen how the government has gotten skilled at driving out the poor without laying a finger on anyone. You find one developer to build you a condo with rent in the 6 figure range, and within 2 years, the surrounding 5 square city blocks will drive out the poor themselves by raising prices. There are ways to look out for the poor, but with the combination of the rate of poor people moving to Lagos, the extremely small size of Lagos, and the fact that it is still a poor city despite what Nigerians think, these situations are just bound to happen.

TheStronghold:


No we see exactly what's happening, we just disagree with your sentiment. You're not smarter than anyone here, we just don't agree with you.

GEJPosterity:


You're playing semantics here. Lagos has always been an immigrant city, right from the slave trade era. In fact its present name comes from a Portuguese word introduced by traders. A substantial inflow (and outflow) of people has always been central to the economic model of Lagos. Whether this was actually officially codified into an immigrant doctrine is completely beside the point. My point was that Lagos has never been an inward looking, nativist place - it has always welcomed newcomers and their economic additions. This new found Yoruba nativist narrative about how other people should "go back home" is bullshit sponsored by people with a political agenda and a government that clearly appears overwhelmed by the size of its task at hand.

And as for Lagos remaining top dog in Nigeria because its leaders "did their job", I'm sure even you didn't take yourself serious when you wrote that. Lagos is Nigeria's only functioning port city in an import dependent country. For a while, it also had Nigeria's only functioning international airport. Is there a port in Abuja? Is Abuja's inaccessible inland location and extreme heat conducive to business as against Lagos, which is right on the coast and already hosted most of Nigeria's economic activity? In fact Lagos has been on autopilot more or less. If its leaders were actually any good, half of the city wouldn't disappear underwater everytime a little rain falls, and I wouldn't have had to change my shock absorbers twice in 3 years.




I'll give you that, but certain guarantees were given at the time of handover that there would be a certain proportion of subsidised accommodation made available to low income families. I volunteered at the Olympics and I saw a few examples of such apartments myself. Yes, much or most of the place may have been gentrified now, agreed, but the point is that the government did not roll in with armed thugs and bulldozers in 3rd world style to kill, injure and intimidate people. Compensation was also paid to prior residents, so if they wished they could even move out of London altogether and start afresh somewhere else. None of these courtesies were given to the people being made homeless over the past week.

GEJPosterity:

I never said I was smarter than anyone. I simply pointed out a demographic time bomb that is ticking, and stated that some of us are so desperate to pretend that we are doing better than we actually are, that we would gladly ignore what is becoming a matter of personal peril. Poverty is so stigmatised in Nigeria that even poor people who are better off than the poor people at Otodo Gbame are deriving some sort of vicarious pleasure from seeing other people get victimised. It makes them feel that they are better than they actually are.

AnambraDota:
I saw where some fat dirty half unclad yolobawomen were floating on the lagoon with rickety boats and few weeks old dark as charcoal sucklings while their lazy husbands gamble away their precious times in betting shops and baba ijebu kiosks sipping monkeytail and reading old newspaper after guzzling some bowls of amala, ewedu garnished with kpomo sitting on old bench

AnambraDota:
I saw iya mosurat floating ontop the lagoon carrying Kazzem and Bosun while baba ipaye her husband gamble his life out at Mabinu ori baba ijebu joint

AnambraDota:
I saw where some fat dirty half unclad yolobawomen were floating on the lagoon with rickety boats and few weeks old dark as charcoal sucklings while their lazy husbands gamble away their precious times in betting shops and baba ijebu kiosks sipping monkeytail and reading old newspaper after guzzling some bowls of amala, ewedu garnished with kpomo sitting on old bench

VirginFinder:
My Take:

Otodo Gbame ex-residents are not Nigerians.
GEJposterity is pained because they are Egun by tribe. Same as he.

Lagos is overpopulated will always suffer infrastructure deficit if the population is not managed.

No number of low cost housing estates will solve the housing problem in Lagos.

By nature, Nigerians are greedy. All low cost housing schemes will end up in the hands of the rich, politicians and their cronies.

Anyone who cant cope with Lagos has 2 options:
1. Go back to their hometowns
2. Relocate to another state close to Lagos like Ogun.

Many Lagosians now live in Ogun state.

When the Lagos-Ibadan rail is completed all the 'poor' people GEJposterity is fighting for will conveniently live in neighbouring states and work in Lagos.

Lobatan!

tollyboy5:

GEJposterity is a badagrian not foreigner as long as I disagree with him I'll still say Lagos lacks the ability to create affordable houses for poor people most of all this development aka eko atlantic is meant for only rich people, I'm not talking about immigrant here I'm talking about indigenes that leave in slum whose land and houses are always been destroyed to accommodate rich people yet when employing people natives are not considered they would sacrifices their father land for government and still need connection to get job in their land. lagosians are suffering also very epe indigenes would have to sell their property to the and live their home town for ogunstate lagos policy has never favoured 90% indigenes but as for immigrating poor masses I don't think Lagos could do much because its still very poor compare to world class cities what Lagos is obsessed with is becoming world class, but neglecting your indigene would cause future trouble just imagine crude oil in badagry and their people were chased out of lekki. We should be careful because badagrians as been neglected and they might resort to militancy

VirginFinder:


Otodo Gbame ex-residents are not Nigerians!

They are from Benin republic.

The land belongs to the Onirus and they have a valid court judgement to take possession of the area.

Sir Micheal Otedola is from Epe

BRF is from Lagos Island

How have Lagos indigenes been unfairly treated?

VirginFinder:


Otodo Gbame ex-residents are not Nigerians!

They are from Benin republic.

The land belongs to the Onirus and they have a valid court judgement to take possession of the area.

Sir Micheal Otedola is from Epe

BRF is from Lagos Island

How have Lagos indigenes been unfairly treated?