For the past month, Lagos State government has been knocking down some structure in various parts of the metropolis tagged “illegal”.
This controversial action by the state government is doing a good thing in a very wrong way. Lagos is a mega city, the most populated city in Africa, and among the first globally. The entire state is one city and has a population of twenty million people.
Demolished Buildings in Lagos.
The city is a miniature of Nigeria. Almost every family in the country has a member there and it’s duly represented. No city or state in Nigeria experiences more influx of people than this already crowded city.
An island as its Spanish nomenclature signifies. Since it is an island, it has limited space. Therefore, the governor of the state should be somebody with both head and heart. These qualities are inevitable for one to be governor of Lagos State.
A negligence of one of these factors will not work. It will bring eventual disaster.
The governor should know when and how to plan. More importantly, the execution must be impeccable. Some of the destroyed buildings could stand on the alleyway without enough setback. Some stood audaciously on the drainages.
The state has agencies that supervise the construction of buildings from foundation to the finished house. Some of them are State Ministry of Works and Land and its subsidiaries.
Who approved the building plan? And who supervised the construction?
It seems people in these government agencies were incompetent. Or the obnoxious Nigerian malaise prevailed. Money exchanged hands. The government officials collected bribes from the owners and turned blind eyes while the illegal structures were going on.
Now, it has created bad public relations for the country. People have lost their businesses including women and those with loans from credit unions.
A Scene of Demolition in Lagos.
It takes a corrupt governor to keep corrupt officials in such critical agencies. The governor cannot claim not to know his workers, especially those on top.
There has been compensation but it did not go round. Some people were not compensated. Among them were bigtime businessmen.
The federal government has an important role to play here. It should approve seaports in other parts of the country. It is one of the major factors that attract people to Lagos. About 95% of imports and exports in the Nigeria go through the city’s wharfs. This is outrageous and can only happen in a country without sanctity of election.
The federal and Lagos State governments should work in synergy to avoid future occurrence of demolitions of “illegal” structures that have led people to their untimely graves due to hear attack does not happen again.
