TWENTY-FIVE old John has spent almost his entire life in the area. Since his parents relocated to Idi-Araba, a large expanse of slum located close to the lagoon in Oworonshoki area of Lagos, about 23 years ago, John has known no other place he could call home. Interestingly, in spite of the hellish condition of his community, John insists “there is life in the ghetto”.
For John, and indeed every resident of this community, originally called ‘Golugo’, Yoruba word for foolishness, with no access road, potable water, drainage, school, hospital or other manifestations of modernity, living is in many ways comparable to Thomas Hobbs’ state of nature where life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short; the state where man struggled against animals and other elements in the bid to conquer his environment.
However, this has not in any form taken anything away from the pride of the residents, who in spite of their poor living conditions hold aloft their dream of a better tomorrow. This is the case with John who works as an estate agent in Ikeja.
To gain access to his home, you would have to trek about 100 metres on a creaking plank bridge and then waddle through some murky water from the lagoon. The house itself is one of the few block buildings in the area. The floor is bare, with the water oozing out from the lagoon.
Like John’s house, the entire community can only be accessed through a road strewn with dirt. The road takes you to a long stretch of narrow plank bridge on which the residents walk into their homes. With no toilet facility available to them, the lagoon serves as the platform for the residents to empty their bowels.
The community is exposed to serious danger in the rainy season when the lagoon overflows its bank, driving reptiles into the living rooms of residents. But if you expect John to get despondent each time he closes from work and heads home, you are in for a surprise.
“I have no reason to be sad or discouraged,” he said. “This is my home, and I am happy to live here. After all, it is my father’s house and I am proud of it.
“Of course, I know that there is a difference between what obtains here and the situation in Ikeja where I am currently doing a part-time job because of the ASUP strike. Yet I appreciate the life around here. My brother, there is life in the ghetto.”
Asked if he was being visited at the slum by his girlfriend, John expressed surprise that the question was asked in the first place. “I have a girlfriend and she comes here to see me. Like I told you, there is life in the ghetto and those of us who live here enjoy it. I am not the kind of guy that would be ashamed to bring his girlfriend here. I bring both my male and female friends to the community. I can never deny the area or speak ill of it.
“When God blesses me, I will demolish the building and rebuild it for my father. If we abandon the community, who would come and develop it for us? It is a challenge that nature has dropped on our laps and we will face it headlong.”
John is proud to be called a ghetto man, but not so for Akin. He (Akin) would go to any length to hide his identity as a slum dweller. Once he gets out of the community, he drops the garb of ghetto life and pose as a highly sophisticated and urbane man. For him, it is a taboo to bring a girlfriend to the community.
Akin said: “I don’t bring my friends here, particularly the female ones. It is not possible for me to do that because most of them assume that I live in a high brow area. If you see me away from this community, you would never believe that I came out of this dilapidated wooden house, because I always dress very well.
“If you were in my shoes, would you bring your babe here? No babe would ever want to have anything to do with you anymore if you bring her here. In fact, most babes in the area prefer to date people outside the community because they don’t want to remain in this condition longer than they have done.
“If you are in this community whenever it rains, you would appreciate what we are talking about. The entire community is usually flooded. At times, parts of the wooden houses are blown away by storm. You could see that some residents are spreading their valuables outside for the sun to dry them.
“The situation is worse if you are outside the community when it rains. This is because you will hardly be able to get into your house. Mosquitoes and other insects will deal with you mercilessly. The net can only protect you when you are sleeping. If you are not sleeping, would you be wearing the net everywhere? I think the mosquitoes have even become our friends and hardly do us any harm.”
Another resident, Remi Adetayo, is also unhappy that she lives in the area. Claiming that she had spent 15 years in the area, she lamented the living condition of the people, blaming it more on the government, from whom she said the community had not received any form of attention over the years.
She said: “I have lived here for 15 years. It has been challenging because the community has never received any form of attention from successive governments. The heap of refuse you are seeing all around the community is not our handiwork. It is not that we are dirty people who enjoy living in the midst of refuse. We are not. The community has been a marshy area from time. It gets worse whenever it rains.
“To make sure we have something to step on when we are going out, we buy refuse from refuse collectors and fill our roads with it. We pay between N50 and N100 for a lorry load of refuse. We buy as many lorry loads as are needed to fill the area we need to cover. Kindhearted refuse collectors sometimes dash us the refuse they would ordinarily dump at refuse sites.
“We also acquire rain boots for our children to enable them move around whenever there is heavy downpour. This also helps to prevent them from infections that may arise from walking barefoot in murky waters.
“We have no basic amenities here. We go outside the community to get water for everything we do in the house. This is challenging because it requires so much time and energy to do this on a daily basis. Besides, we also spend a lot of money doing this every day. I am not a tenant. The house I live in is our family house.”
Mosquitoes might be the worst enemies of the residents of this Lagos community, but the dirty water from the lagoon is also a veritable source of seasonal threat. In their battle for survival, the residents have devised ways of beating the water surge by raising the base of their structures very high in order to beat the water surge.
But it is not that easy to escape mosquito bites, which have landed many of them in hospitals located several kilometres away. Despite the free treated mosquito nets distributed to them by the Lagos State Government, the residents, whose homes are made mostly of planks and rusty corrugated iron sheets and overgrown with weeds, are veritable breeding grounds for mosquitoes. Hence most of the residents regularly fall victim to malaria.
“It is impossible not to have mosquitoes in an area like this. Malaria would have been killing us on a daily basis if not for the treated mosquito nets distributed by the Lagos State Government,” Remi said.
While a first time visitor to the community would cringe at the sight of huge refuse and its nauseating odour, which gets worse whenever it rains, the residents struggle to buy truck-loads of it from refuse collectors and pour same on the paths that lead to their homes.
“The refuse that litters the community may appear horrible to an outsider,” reasoned a resident who identified herself simply as Bose, “but it serves a good purpose here. We use it to fill the roads because we don’t have the resources to buy sophisticated materials to do that. They have been helpful all along.
“We are used to the conditions in which we have found ourselves in the community. It is a natural habitat that many people would like to live in. Contrary to fears by people that cooking and eating in a place like this may lead to outbreak of sicknesses, I can confidently tell you that we have never had any such experience in the area.”
Some of the wooden houses are occupied by their owners. The rent for the ones occupied by tenants ranges between N700 and N1000 every month. The rent for brick houses is between N2,500 and N3, 000.
Taye Omonuberu lives with his grandmother. A graduate of the Yaba College of Technology, Taiwo, whose wife lives outside the community, has not been able to get a job since he left school. Left with no other choice, Taiwo said he was compelled to live in the squalor.
He said: “I have been living here for the past 20 years. The community is another world entirely. It lacks all the basic things that one requires to live a happy life. As a young man, I am not comfortable living in the area. My wife could not even stay here with me because of the deplorable state of the community.
“We live in Lagos, but we are worse off than most rural dwellers. We vote during elections and pay all the necessary dues and levies, yet we are regrettably not considered to enjoy the dividends of democracy. This is a ghetto to the core.”
Issac, who said he had lived in the community for more than 20 years, does not see anything wrong with living in the area.
He said: “I have been living here for the past 20 years. It has not been easy, but we thank God for helping us to weather the storm till this day.
“The challenges we have in the community are multifaceted and they happen all the year round. It is, however worse during the rainy season. Whenever it rains heavily, the flood covers the planks that make movement possible in the area. This poses serious danger because one would not know where to put his feet in such an unpleasant situation.”
Fortunately, the residents said they were yet to record any death resulting from a resident falling off the narrow wooden paths into the lagoon.
Isaac said: “We have had situations where people fell off the plank into the water. But we have not recorded any case of death arising from such accidents. The saving grace is that many people in the community know how to swim very well. When they find themselves in such conditions, they always employ their swimming skills to get out of danger.”
In spite their seemingly hopeless condition, residents of Idi-Araba have not lost the will to enjoy life. In the midst of the suffering, some of the shanties have satellite dishes hoisted on their roofs. These give their neighbours a sense of modernity as they gather round television sets to watch news from across the world on CNN, BBC and other satellite channels.
Like most communities elsewhere, residents of Idi-Araba have devised ways to ensure their safety and ensure that the community is made unsafe for criminals who may be looking for safe havens.
The head of the community, Chief Olorunwa Luwa, said his people had done well with the security problems by establishing a cordial relationship with the police. He, however, lamented the lack of basic amenities in his community, calling on the government to come to the aid of his people.
“We are aware that the state government is doing very well, but we are yet to get their attention in our community. When you look around, you will see that we have little or no touch of government activities. The few developments we have here are through communal efforts.
“We lack so many things in the community and would appreciate if the government could come to our rescue. We would appreciate if they help us with water supply, a health centre and a public school. We have none of these and it is having an adverse effect on our people.
“If we have a health centre, our people will have quick access to medical attention and this would reduce the stress they go through travelling to distant places when there are emergencies.”
Chief (Dr.) Aborewa John is the chief priest of the community. Together with other elders, he sees to the security and spiritual needs of his people.
“Our community is a unique one in every sense of it. It is totally different from other ghettos you would find anywhere in the state. Unlike other communities where crime is prevalent, our community is totally free from criminal activities. We have put in place tight security measures which have made it impossible for criminals to operate in the area.
“We have security men in every part of the community. They secure the entire area and make sure that nobody moves around after 9 pm. If anybody is found moving about, especially in a suspicious manner, they would apprehend the person and hand him over to the police.
“We have a good working relationship with the police. It would also interest you to know that the community does not harbor people who would appear innocent at home, but go out to commit crime. We always keep eagle eyes on every member of the community to make sure that nobody tarnishes our image.
“We may not have basic amenities but we have integrity. We also don’t condone promiscuity. It is totally against our principles in this area. If we find anybody engaging in promiscuous activities, we would quickly hand such a person over to the police.”
Speaking on the state of slum communities in the state, the state Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Mr. Aderemi Ibiriogba, said the Lagos State Government woud not leave out any area across the state in its transformation agenda.
Ibiriogba, who was responding to the condition of living in slum communities in the state, told The Nation that the Governor Babatunde Fashola administration is committed to bring development to every part of the state, including Idi-Araba community in Oworonshoki.
He explained that the government had consistently warned residents about the need to always maintain a clean environment in other to avoid the outbreak of epidemic in their area.
Ibirogba also explained other efforts of the government to ensure that residents in the state enjoy good health, which he said include the distribution of free treated mosquito net and free medical service. According to him, the state government’s free health service also includes the provision of free healthcare services to the people in all the local government areas across the state.
“Well, let me first of all say that we have not forgotten about the slum in Oworonshoki. We are committed to bring development to every part of Lagos State. And that is why our impact is being felt in Badagry, Shomolu, Epe, Iyana Ipaja and every other parts of the state, where we are carrying out one project or the other.
“You will agree with me that there is the possibility of an outbreak of an epidemic in any community where the condition of living is not hygienic. That is why we have upped our game as far as health for all is concerned. To solve this, we have established primary health centres in the local government areas so that people with minor ailment can easily go there for treatment.”
