Pathetic world of Lagos community where residents sit on the floor

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Many things still confuse the young mind of Tumininu Olulana beyond his least favourite subjects.

For one, the 10-year-old boy does not understand why he has a chair in school but has to sit on the floor at home since all they have in their sitting areas are mats. Then when his school friends talk about their favourite television programmes, he has to remind them that his parents do not have electronic gadgets.

Olulana has told his story often that his situation was becoming an object of joke among his peers.

He lives with his family at ‘Canal Area’ in Orile-Agege Local Council Development Area of Lagos State, where residents do not keep furniture, beds and other items like electronic gadgets because of constant flooding.

The canal often overflows its banks and floods houses in the community. Therefore, the Olulanas and many other residents sit and sleep on the floor in their homes.

“I feel ashamed when my friends talk about movies and I can’t join in the discussion.” He said with a tinge of frustration.

But Olulana is not alone as the situation also embarrasses his mother, Esther. She hardly invites friends and family members home because of the shame of having to repeatedly apologise for the absence of seats and other household items that could make them comfortable during such visits.

“We don’t have visitors unless it is absolutely necessary,” she said.

“This place is often flooded, so we can’t buy furniture and other household items that can be destroyed by water. It is embarrassing to be explaining the situation to visitors.

“Mats are popular here because it is what residents use in their homes to sit and sleep on. It is not our wish not to provide these things for ourselves and our children but it is a necessity in the area because the canal often overflows its banks and heavy water runs into the neighbourhood.”

Interestingly, it has almost become a tradition for new residents of the area to be inducted into the community because of its peculiar circumstances that require a few endurance tricks.

For instance, the community does not give residents the luxury of keeping such items and they get to know about such golden rules one way or another.
The Olulanas in their home
The Olulanas in their home

For the lucky new residents, they get to know after being inducted by old neighbours. But the unlucky ones have to learn the hard way.

The oining Oko Oba Channel (Arigbanla), a wide trapezoidal concrete canal that runs through the Lagos State Abattoir and Lairage, Oko Oba down to Aboru.

The canal is meant to drain the community which comprises of the streets including Oko- Oba, Egbatedo, Alaramimo, Alexandra, Azeez Olaosebikan, Adelekan, Shoritire and Orelope in the LCDA.

Mrs. Esther Ogunmodede got an induction from residents when she moved into the community but has been finding it harder to cope in the last couple of years, in spite of that.

Her once luscious black hair has gone grey and her body has ceased to be what it used to be.

Now in her late 60s, Ogunmodede knows that old age is coming upon her and the pain in her lower back has also been a silent reminder of a lost youthfulness.

“I hope this pain in my back will not kill me,” she said as she struggled to get up from her mat.

“We deal with flood water from the canal every time, so we have no other choice but to do away with household items that can be damaged by water. Many residents had such items before being damaged by flood water. My back pain shows that not sleeping on comfortable foams is already telling on my health.”

Sadly, no one shared the community’s golden rules with Mr. Afeez Ogunmola when he moved into the community about a year ago.

After Ogunmola’s six month- search for affordable accommodation culminated at a one bedroom flat, close to a canal in the area, he was happy for himself. He was particularly glad that the canal, as a major landmark in the area, would be a good reference point to use when describing the location of his new flat to his friends and relations.

Indeed, the canal did make it easier for Ogunmola to describe his flat to people. Ironically, it also made him reluctant to invite visitors over.

On a cold rainy July night in 2014, Ogunmola woke up with a start after he suddenly realised that his flat was flooded.

“It was raining and I was asleep, so I did not realise that my place was flooded until I was wet,” he recalled with some measure of regret.

“My couches, mattress and electronic equipment were all soaked. It was later that I realised that other residents were better prepared than I was. They told me that no one in the area kept such things again because they could get damaged by the frequent flood.

“It has been a lesson for me since then so I stopped replacing anything that got damaged by flood. I never recovered from that experience because I lost so many personal belongings. I spent days mopping and cleaning my flat after that experience. Most families only have transistor radios in the absence of televisions and other gadgets.”

With a couple of other similar experiences, Ogunmola soon realised the folly of keeping items that could be damaged by water, saying that he had since stopped repairing his damaged property or buying new ones.

Therefore, his rooms have transformed to bare floors like his neighbours’, which are devoid of furniture, couch, electronic gadgets and mattress.

For many residents in the area, what is left of their furniture are seen outside, where they have been abandoned and left at the mercy of sun, rain and other elements.

One feature that most homes seem to have in common in the community are racks on the walls to put items like food stuff, books, documents, money, clothes, shoes and other valuables.

Each year, the residents of the community approach the rainy season with a sense of trepidation, knowing that the same ritual of having to scoop flood water from their homes awaits them.

About three years ago, a section of the building at 10, Shoretire Close, where Arije had lived for over a decade, was swept off by flood. The walls separating the house from adjoining ones also collapsed.

Arije and other occupants in the house were lucky to survive the incident.

Showing our correspondent round the house, Mrs. Christiana Arije explained how residents of the community have adapted to the peculiar nature of the area and devised specific ways of doing things.

She said, “We keep all our things up on the racks we have fixed in the rooms. Our clothes and other important things are kept far away from the floor because the water can sometimes be shoulder-high. That way, they are kept safe when water comes in but there is a limit to the size of what we can put on it. I don’t have any item of furniture because it will be a waste to do so.”

The debris of the collapsed fences still littered the compound when our correspondent visited the place. Arije and other occupants have been reluctant to erect new fences because of the fear that they would again be destroyed by flood.

“We are all tired of the situation here but we don’t have any other place to go,” Arije said while appealing to the state government to come to their aid.

Sad tales

Everyone in the community seems to have a sad tale to tell about the effects of flooding in the area.

For Mr. Samuel Olumuyiwa, flooding cost him his job four months ago. Olumuyiwa used to work for a company that specialises in the marketing of foreign books and was often required to bring books home.

One day, while he was not at home, there was a heavy rain, which flooded his room, along with the books in his possession. Olumuyiwa was sacked by his employer the next day.

“Since then, I have been looking for a new job without success,” he said.

“My boss said that I was careless and blamed me for living in an area that is prone to flood.”

Sometimes, on rainy days, children in the community stay off school as sad tales of deadly flooding still haunt the residents.

About a year ago, a pupil of about 10 years old was swept away by flood, an incident that followed a similar fate suffered by a carpenter, known as Labaika, in the area.

But one of the saddest incidents yet in the area occurred at Arigbanla in July 2011, when Mrs. Christiana Sosanya’s seven month-old daughter, Elizabeth, was swept away by flood.

Following the tragic incident, each time it rains on school days, it is common to see parents rush to the canal to pick their children from Oko Oba and Ladoje primary schools in the area.

Both schools share a compound and are located a few metres from the canal.

Sometimes, the parents have to wait for their children across the canal for hours, too helpless to cross to their side of the channel to get them while it is raining and floodwater is still high.

The tragic incidents have cast a dark shadow on the community, already forcing some residents to leave. Such residents include landlords who have had to abandon their houses, many of which have been overgrown by weeds and covered with grime from years of neglect.

For instance, Mrs. Fatima Afuwape and her family had to abandon her husband’s house on Shoretire Close for a rented flat on Ejalonibu Street, also in Orile-Agege, but farther from the canal.

“We had to take the children and leave the area,” she said, smiling broadly.

“The decision to leave the community has been worth it even though the house has been vacant since then. It is a shame to see the house as it is with weeds all over but we are happy where we are because my family is safer there.

“Three times, my husband fixed the house after being damaged by flood but he realised that he could not continue to waste money on it. The community still gets flooded every year.”

Similarly, Mrs. Kemi Oyelahan, a widow, who lost her husband six years ago, has been living with regrets ever since.

Each morning, the septuagenarian saunters down her flat upstairs on Egbatedo Street and goes round her property, mulling over the waste that has become of the investment.

She regrets that she and her late husband had chosen to build the house in the community. Her building has three flats downstairs, which have all been vacant since 2011 because prospective tenants have avoided staying there.

“It is only the flats upstairs that tenants are interested in taking; it is so sad to see such an investment dilapidate,” she said.

“If the flats were occupied, they would be generating about N500,000 annually but I’ve not made any money from them for a long time because of the situation here. It is more painful because I’m retired and no longer work. The problem was not really serious until water from various places in Lagos was diverted through the Oko Oba channel.”

Many of the community’s residents blame the state government for the continued flooding that is being experienced in the area, a view that was also shared by Afuwape.

She blamed the government for failing to complete the project and described the canal as lacking the depth required to effectively drain the volume of water and effluents in Orile-Agege and beyond.

“One, the government has not completed the project and secondly, it is not deep enough,” she said.

Afuwape also said it did not matter if it does not rain in their community, “as long as it rains in other areas like Iju and Akute, the water from those places will come through here, overflow the banks of the canal and flood our community.”

Residents of the community have made repeated efforts to find a lasting solution to flooding in the area by writing to the state government and also setting up a ‘Canal committee’ to deal with flood-related issues.

The committee’s Public Relations Officer, Mrs. Toyin Alayande, said its members have grown weary of several failed attempts to achieve its aim.

She recalled how flood water once swept away her stove and pot of fish stew following a particularly heavy rainfall in the area a couple of years ago.

However, Alayande said she was not keen on leaving the community yet for ‘personal reasons.”

“We have written several letters to the state government but the situation is still the same,” she said.

Housing challenge

With an estimated 21 million people, Lagos is one of the world’s fastest growing metropolises.

It is the second most populous city in Africa after Cairo in Egypt and estimated to be the fastest growing city on the continent and the seventh fastest growing in the world with a population increase of about 600,000 persons per annum.

According to a 2010 study by the Lagos State Ministry of Housing, over 91 per cent of its total population lives in the metropolis with a population density of about 20, 000 persons per square kilometer in the built-up areas of Metropolitan Lagos.

The study put Lagos’ occupancy ratio at between eight to ten persons per room with 72.5 per cent of households occupying one-room apartment. Although, new buildings continuously spring up in Lagos, they are largely inadequate to cater for its metropolis’ growing housing needs.

Information from the Lagos State Development and Property Corporation shows that it delivered 20,120 housing units between 1972 and 1999 and 1,818 between 2000 and 2010.

However, the population of the metropolis rose from 3.5 million in 1975 to 13.4 million in 2000 and about 18 million by 2010. Therefore, the total stock from LSDPC over the 38-year period is 22, 419 housing units, which is an average of 590 units per annum.

Meanwhile, the growth of the population in the metropolitan Lagos has continued to assume a geometrical proportion.

Efforts by the state government have so far failed to bridge the gap in housing needs.

For instance, in August 2010, the Lagos State Government established the Lagos HomeOwnership Mortgage Scheme, otherwise called LagosHOMS, with a Mortgage Board to boost housing supply and improve the access of key socio-economic groups to efficiently priced and decent housing.

The scheme has, however, failed to achieve its goal six years down the line.

The Lagos State Government estimates in 2004 put 51 per cent of men and 54 per cent of women residing in Lagos as living below the poverty line, meaning that a large number of residents have been unable to benefit from government housing schemes because their costs are often beyond their reach.

Experts have however called on the government to relocate residents living in the community and other flood plains in the state.

Environmental activist, Desmond Majekodunmi, painted a gloomy picture of the environmental challenges confronting the state government, saying “it will get worse than this because of climate change and global warming.”

He, however, urged the government to understand the extent of environmental challenges confronting it and deal with them.

He said, “It (Oko Oba flooding) has gone on for too long because it occurs annually. It is a problem that Lagos will have to face more and more as the years go by. This means a lot more rainfall in shorter period of time, which is the classic symptom of the global warming effect.

“Once we have that mindset, we have to take practical steps to correct the problem. We should immediately start to relocate some people living on flood plains. They may be there illegally or it may have been the fault of governmental system that they are there, but government has to find better alternatives for them.

“It is going to cost money but it should not be about the money because we are talking about human lives, which are at stake. Government can look at the place where the rivers run into and the problem there, which could be as a result of siltation. That means that the beds of the rivers have been filled up with a lot of mud and sand. This is caused by erosion. So the government needs to start tackling erosion, dredging those rivers and looking at the low lying building systems.

“Governance is not just about saying sorry and giving flood victims bags of rice.”

The Chairman, Estate Surveyors and Valuers Registration Board of Nigeria, Mr. Williams Odudu, also called on the government to relocate the affected residents and improve the drainage system in the state.

He said, “Government should find a way of relocating the people there and find a solution to the drainage problem. It’s only the government that can do it; the efforts of individuals or the community cannot be adequate. Government should find a way of relocating the people and use the area for another purpose.

“Once the water is channelled properly, the problem will be solved. There are a number of places in Netherlands where people live below the sea level but because of the drainage system, they live comfortably and are not afraid of flooding.”

Meanwhile, residents of the community have continued to cry to the government to save them from the constant threats, but there is no end in sight to the problems.

The Lagos State Commissioner for the Environment, Dr. Babatunde Adejare, who explained that he was new in the position, promised to inspect the water channel to see what needs to be done by the government.

He, however, urged residents of the state to stop dumping refuse inside canals along waterways.

He said, “I’m from Agege so I know the area very well. We have done a lot in the area but we will still do more. I have yet to visit the place as a commissioner but it is my area so I know what you are talking about. People still dump refuse inside the canal which also contributes to the problem. We also want our people to live responsibly and prevent flood from coming to them. So we need a lot of education for our people.

“I would go and see it before I comment on (whether the project was completed or not). But you can be rest assured that we will do the needful. Government will do what it has to do because the money belongs to the people but the important thing is for the people to stop dumping wastes inside the canal. The community development associations should also do more, but I can assure you that we will do something there in the next fiscal year.”

Speaking on calls by residents of the area to make the canal deeper, Adejare said there was a limit to how deep the canal could be.

He said, “Lagos is a low land, so there is a depth we cannot go beyond. If it is dug deeper than that depth, water will remain stagnant and not run off when there is no rain. All these things need to be taken into consideration. If it were not so, the state government would have dug a very deep canal. I am planning to inspect the place soon

Source: Punch