[size=14pt]Unusual Lagos residents: They live on waterfront and have never stepped into the city in 30 years [/size]
By GILBERT EKEZIE

Sunday, July 3, 2011
You hear of Lagos from outside Lagos and immediately get the impression that the residents live in the sky and walk around on gold paved pavilions. This is a piece of advice: Don’t get carried away about the wonders you hear of Lagos until you have read this story.


[img]http://odili.net/news/source/2011/jul/3/sun/unusual-lagosians[1].jpg[/img]
Play time: Children on break at seaside school
PHOTO: OMONIYI AYEDUN




But the major truth is that Lagos is a multiplicity of worlds tied into one bunch. Within this bunch co-exist the very high, the high, the low, the very low and those too low they hardly see the sky.

The very low Lagosians have the ugly lot of living in shanties, in bushes, at the backhouse and even on the dirty waters and waterfronts that stretch at the lagoon edges. The residents on the waters live in a kind of world in Lagos you need to see to know. It is no fable that though they live in Lagos, they are not of the city. One of the residents, and indeed, the last of 22 siblings and only one that went to school revealed in a shocking narrative that some members of his community have lived in the area for over 30 years. But within this period, they have never stepped into any part of Lagos. From their abode they see the prominent

Third Mainland Bridge with the endless flow of traffic of exotic and state-of-the-art automobiles. As the Africa’s longest bridge arches in a semi circle near their homes like a rainbow, they only see the structure and the vehicles that drive on them, but never went near or touched the vehicles. The closest they ever get to the bridge and the noise of the zooming automobiles on them is when they pole their canoes across under the belly on their fishing mission.

What the residents of these places, especially the children go through to school and back is a story that needs special narration.

Such children exist in the thousands in Lagos and their natural route to school and back home daily is a journey in crammed canoes manually rowed or powered by outboard engines. They wake up very early to face the hazardous waters in high and low ebb. The kids could be as young as four or five years, but that makes no difference in their dosage of exposure to danger everyday on the waters.

To have a good experience of what the kids and other residents of this section of Lagos go through, a visit to their world would be a wise take.

In addition to using the waterways as their daily route, they also live and exist on the waters.

These Lagosians who spend their lives on the waters also live in very peculiar structures. Their homes are built on the water and made simply by hoisting four wooden poles on the water, deck the top with planks and put up walls also made of light materials like old pan roofing sheets or wooden boards. With a slanting corrugated roofing sheets top, a house is built that caters for everything you would guess applicable in a home from living rooms to kitchen, storehouse and bedroom.

The structures, the way they are set, the sizes and the surroundings make a complete set of slum arrangement.

Seeing the wooden structures, especially from the Third Mainland Bridge and Adeniji Adele road, both on the Lagos Island, anyone that is not familiar with water, would be terrified at the environment and shocked wondering how the residents cope.

Saturday Sun visited the communities of Makoko in Yaba Local Government Area, Lagos, one of the notorious waterfront slums. The area is indeed popular because of its peculiar nature. It is the abode of the Ilaje and Egun ethnic groups who are virtually fishermen and women. These people live all their lives on the water. Some of them only come to the seashore to sell their fishes and buy things they need, then, retire to their water base.

http://www.sunnewsonline.com/default.htm

from the sun newspaper what do u expect from a bigoted source

22 siblings?

I went to school in Kano with a son of former Emir of Kano, Sarki Mohammadu Sanusi, who abdicated the throne for Ado Bayero.

The Emir had about 96 children.

I don't blame them for not coming out. Come out into what, misery and sufferhead?

^^the man in niger state has maybe 400 children, but in aloy emeka's piece, having 22 children in that situation [ie no means of caring for them] is rather contradictory and kind of defeats the purpose of the article.

should have been left out, imo.

Negro_Ntns:

I went to school in Kano with a son of former Emir of Kano, Sarki Mohammadu Sanusi, who abdicated the throne for Ado Bayero.

The Emir had about 96 children.

I don't blame them for not coming out. Come out into what, misery and sufferhead?

Roflmao