Name: Public safety or power play: why were thousands of waterfront homes destroyed in Lagos? | DW News
Uploaded: 2026-01-31T16:56:56.000Z
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Thousands of people in Lagos are homeless after their houses in the waterfront informal settlement Makoko were demolished by the government.

Authorities say these structures were unsafe and posed a serious risk.

But critics insist the government has other motives.

Makoko is located on the shores of Lagos Lagoon.

It is partly made up of floating communities and houses built on stilts.

The settlement was established more than a hundred years ago.

In a moment, I will be talking to an urban planner about Makoko's future.

With Lagos slated to become the most populous city in the world.

But first, DW's Amaka Okoye visited the community after the demolitions.

Affected residents told her they've been left stranded without warning.

At the end of last month, the excavators came and began eating their way through through the wooden houses.

Makoko is a densely populated waterfront settlement in Lagos.

It is home to hundreds of thousands of people.

But human rights organizations say that by the time the government operation ended on January 23, three of them were dead, including two infants, after authorities used tear gas on residents protesting the demolitions.

Please tell the whole world what is happening.

This woman says the roof was ripped from her home.

But she has to spend the night here because she has nowhere else to go.

Others were left to salvage whatever could still still be saved before the demolition reached their homes.

Now he's moving the desks to dry land and his belongings to this boat, which has become home for his family.

I spent 10 years, over three years to build this school.

This is a structure that accommodates 650 children.

Where we bring them in, we give them food, we teach them how, we drop them back.

When we don't have anywhere to go, they won't give us any letter.

They don't try to have a meeting with us when we have a relocation plan.

And the demolitions have destroyed livelihoods too.

All the fish I smoked in my house were destroyed.

I fainted that day and people had to revive me.

What you see here was given to me on credit.

Officials insist the clearances were only out of concern for public safety and have hit back at the criticism.

We're not demolishing the whole of Makoko.

We're clearing people to not to get to Third Milan Bridge and to stay off behind the high tension.

But residents understood that there was an agreed 100 meter setback from the power lines and say the demolitions extend well beyond that.

The flag post marks a 100 meter setback from the power line, a boundary which the government says it has repeatedly warned residents not to build beyond.

It has moved over 200 meters away from the agreed marker.

Authorities have not publicly acknowledged any change to the setback distance officials maintain the clearance is guided by safety regulations and planning law around power transmission lines.

So far, the government has only said that it has plans for those who have been displaced by the demolitions.

But with no details on offer, affected residents in Makoko face a very uncertain future.

To talk more about what the future looks like for residents of Makoko, we've invited Stephen Ajadi onto the program.

He's an architect, urban planner and development economist.

Dr. Ajadi, the government in Lagos says the demolitions in Makoko are about safety and urban planning.

From your expertise as an urban planner, was this inevitable?

It is a kind of an inevitable process for both the slum area and the government.

I mean, it's not the first time they'll be demolishing Marco Courts, but

this is probably one of the first periods time that they've done a very huge chunk of it.

So historically, I would say it happens in certain social, political cycles.

And as government puts it, the demolition was about structures in the settlement that were built too close to power lines.

Can you speak more to the safety risk that these transmission lines posed to residents?

First of all, I think from the standpoint of government, you must understand the behavior of slums.

They have a kind of extemporaneous sprawl character.

They expand in different directions for different reasons at different times.

And basically, power lines are very dangerous, especially when they span across large water bodies and even small water bodies.

Planners avoid putting residences near power lines.

Some people will say it's a huge life risk.

Now, Makoko, we're talking about a place that's more than 100 years old and it's been growing as an informal settlement.

And you really get the sense if you've been there, that residents have adapted to living on water.

Can people live there as they do now for another hundred years?

But in the argument is if they can, in the same manner that they are doing now.

Because Makoko has existed for the better part of 172 years.

The impressive part of Mahoko is the sustainability of the culture.

It has demonstrated a huge resilience in terms of the culture people.

I think that Makoko as a place has evolved over different cycles of urbanity that Lagos has experienced.

But I think we are at peak times of urbanization.

However, Makoko must not be victimized in this process.

Because let us not be mistaken, Makoko is undergoing a process of change.

All cities on the planet are undergoing a process of change.

How we value that change and how we go about embodying that change is quite important.

They can stay there for another hundred years.

However, the systems of their current living dynamics has to drastically change.

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Public safety or power play: why were thousands of waterfront homes destroyed in Lagos? | DW News

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