Otodo-Gbame: NGO Asks Lagos to Respect Court Ruling

The Centre for Children’s Health Education, Orientation and Protection
(CEE-HOPE), a non-governmental organisation (NGO) working for the
protection of vulnerable children, has asked the Lagos State
Government (LASG) to respect a recent court ruling which directed it
to stop further demolition of Otodo Gbame and other impoverished
waterfront communities across the state.

In a statement in Lagos, CEE-HOPE’s Executive Director, Betty Abah
hailed the June 21 landmark ruling by Justice Surajudeen Onigbanjo of
the Lagos High Court which held that the violent eviction of Otodo
Gbame, a poor fishing community was inhuman, unconstitutional and
constitutes a violation of their fundamental human right. Justice
Onigbanjo also ordered that the state government stop further
evictions and discuss re-settlement with the affected.
‘We are elated at the outcome of the case and this further reinforces
our faith in the fact that the court continues to be the last hope of
the poor and powerless of society,’ said Abah.

Between October 2016 and April 2017, Lagos State Government carried
out violent demolition exercises, with the help of the police and
armed thugs, mostly in the dead of night, in which houses, schools and
market places at Otodo Gbame were razed down by fire and the people
chased into the lagoon, ultimately forcing out the entire 32, 000
people on April 9, 2017. Several were shot, four were killed (with
reports of several more including children drowned in the earlier
October attack). That was despite a subsisting court injunction. The
state government continued to justify the gross human rights
violations under the guise of developing a mega city. The action has
received condemnation from several local and international bodies
including Amnesty International.

In a recent documentary video, titled CRUSHED (youtu.be/sntS78jbZ0Q ),
CEE-HOPE also documented the excruciating impacts of the demolitions
on children, showing how the evictions by the state government lead to
the death of several children, those being uprooted out of school,
driven into homelessness and further brinks of poverty and misery by
the government.

Also, recently, the Lagos State Government, just as in the Otodo Gbame
pattern, violated a court ruling and demolished Badia East, another
slum settlement and typically, without adequate notice, provision of
alternative housing accommodation or compensation as stipulated by
local and international laws. Currently, thousands of people,
including infants, are stranded amidst the debris of Badia East and at
the mercy of the elements. The organisation further called on LASG to
obey the June 21 court ruling which also applies to all the waterfront
communities and its 300, 000 residents across the state scheduled for
forced eviction. It advised the government to follow in the steps of
Brazil, Kenya and other countries which resorted to slums’ upgrade
rather than clearance and work towards an inclusive, humane and
progressive urban space and governance system.

According to CEE-HOPE, ‘It is a real scandal that Lagos, which should
be the bastion of democracy continues to indict our common humanity
before the world as a nation with its degrading and inhuman treatment
of the urban poor and continues to endanger the lives and future of
young people whose only crime is being born poor.’

‘Lagos must have regards for the UN Convention on the Rights of the
Child (1992), the Nigerian Child Rights Act, 2003,  the Child Rights
Act of Lagos State 2007 and the recent Child Protection Policy of
Lagos State (2017) all of which adequately entrust it with the care
and protection of children, particularly the most at-risk as the
thousands violently uprooted from Otodo-Gbame represent.

‘It is awkward that Lagos would expect citizens to be law-abiding when
the state consistently violates its own court rulings and the tenets
of the rule of law. If you violate with mindless impunity the rights
of the vulnerable among you including children at the brink of
existence whose protection should be your priority, then you send a
horrendous message to the world, not only of the brutal nature of your
government, but an indictment of our collective humanity as a nation,’
the statement concludes.