November has come and gone. For a lot of people it was a month of hope, hope that as the year runs to an end their dreams will become reality, their plans will materialise, their investments in the course of the year will bring returns and they will celebrate the end of the old year in joy while being ushered into the New Year.
Old businesses look forward to expansion while new ones see it as an opportunity to build on the contacts they have gotten thus far even as they hope the coming year brings with it good tidings for their businesses. This expectation is true for established organisations, micro-businesses as well as for small and medium scale enterprises.
Unfortunately, this is not the case in Jakande Estate, a low-cost housing estate in Oke-afa which sits between Isolo and Ejigbo. The situation since November 1, 2016, has been one of confusion, shock and despair. A common misfortune has befallen container and kiosk operators in the estate who make a living from the businesses they operate from these kiosks for survival. It’s a lose-lose situation both for the tenant kiosk operators and their landlords, the latter who in most cases are retirees who depend on the proceeds from kiosk rentals to survive.
The gloomy situation is due to the demolition exercise which was carried out by the Lagos State government through the state Ministry of the Environment and the Lagos State Building Investment Company (LBIC). While the government adduces that notices were issued and kiosks marked for removal prior to the demolition exercise, kiosk operators and residents alike argue that they were not aware of such notices or that the notice given was too short.
The exercise is a critical one as several hundreds of kiosks and containers have been marked for demolition while others have been razed to the ground. The streets were littered with broken roofing sheets, broken wood and crushed concrete blocks. Most kiosk and container owners were moving their belongings or tearing down the shops by themselves, even before the bulldozer got to them. Cart-pushers were also very busy as they were hauling and moving cart-loads of iron, wood or dirt from one street to the other.
The air was dusty from the demolition and the atmosphere was filled with noises of tools being used to manually knock out doors, burglar proof and whatever else may be of worth from the shops before the bulldozers get to them.
It was a brisk business for carpenters, plumbers, masons and other labourers who were employed to manually remove objects or break down the structures before the bulldozer got to them. It was also an opportunity for hoodlums to wade through the debris to steal what they could from demolished shops whose owners were unavailable to remove their belongings.
Jakande Estate Isolo is a hitherto peaceful estate. People come from far and wide to trade and transact business in the estate. Residents are mostly retired or serving civil servants and their families with a handful of other people who are non-civil servants. A great number of residents operate kiosks for sustenance or as a way of getting extra income to augment their earnings.
The estate houses more than ten internal access roads and most of them house up to 50 or more kiosks and containers. In fact, the Double star road holds no fewer than a hundred (100) shops which run businesses like provisions sales, tailoring and dressmaking, fabric sales, raw food items retail, generator repairs, cyber café operation, hairdressing and barbing salons, kerosene retail and many others.
These businesses are replicated throughout the estate and have helped to force the prices of commodities in the estate retail market to remain competitive. They have also helped to bring the market closer to residents while providing employment for their operators. Just one shop could generate income for three or more people: the landlord, the tenant and the salesperson(s).
When approached, a kerosene retailer who had to forcefully deconstruct her container and remove the tank for fear of it being destroyed lamented that she was not duly notified as her container had only been marked on Friday the 28th of October.
She wondered why LBIC would take such a measure since she was given the approval to use the space for business and was required to pay N5000 yearly to LBIC and another N3500 yearly to the Local Government Council for her use of the space. She said she had documents to back up her claim.
Another woman who operates a mini-boutique from a kiosk when asked what she planned to do as her shop was affected said, “I just paid #60,000 for my shop rent. I have used the remaining money to buy market for Christmas. Where am I going to see the money again to rent shop? I will just be coming to this place (her demolished shop). I will put umbrella and be managing”
A retiree who owned a container shop substantiated the kerosene retailer’s claims and even produced documents to show that the LBIC gave approval for the setting up of the container for business and also showed receipts of taxes and levies paid to both the Local Government Council and to the LBIC. She lamented that she set up the place for her daughter who after graduating from school did not have a job for over ten years and wondered what the government expected them to do post-demolition.
Another retiree who had a small shop which he let out to a caterer said that the immediate past governor had agreed that kiosks be built to help support retirees who were in great number in the estate. He said specifications were given to them and they were asked to build a temporal structure made partly of wood and partly of cement. But because they suffered break-ins and robberies, they decided to fortify the shops by making it fully concrete. He alleged that the current exercise was instigated by the immediate past executive chairman of the Landlords and Residents Association who had liaised with some LBIC officials to sell off land along the Ring Road/ Foursquare Avenue and wanted to cover his misdeeds.
His claim was echoed by another retiree who happened to be friends with the current executive chairman. The executive chairman could not be reached for his comments on the issue as he was said to have led a delegation to appeal for the intervention of Alhaji Lateef Jakande, a former governor of Lagos State in whose tenure the estate was built.
At the LBIC office in the estate, it was gathered that no staff was allowed to speak on the issue except for those in charge of the estate at their Ikeja Head Office.
An official of the Ministry of the environment who did not give his name stated that it was not true that the government had approved the building of kiosks in the estate and that demolition notices had been issued several times over the years since 2007, the latest of which he said was given about a month to the demolition exercise.
He said that whenever they went about to issue notices, they went with representatives of the media. He also said that the demolition order was an executive order and as such nothing could be done about it. He added that similar demolition had recently been carried out at the Iponri Housing Estate and so this was not meant to punish a particular set of people. He, however, refused to say when the notices were given and insisted he would only answer further questions from his office at the State Secretariat.
Mr Balogun, a zonal secretary in the Double Star axis of the estate confirmed that indeed notices had been issued but the cost of printing and circulating these notices to about 500 blocks of flats, each of which housed a minimum of 6 flats, was huge. As such, they encouraged residents to attend the monthly general meetings in their zones where such information was usually disseminated. Unfortunately, those claiming ignorance were those who either did not attend the meetings or whose landlords had not relayed the information to them.
He said the move was necessary because it was the only way to restore sanity to the estate as people had violated the privilege given to them by building permanent structures and by building bigger kiosks than the LBIC had approved.
He said this had created disorderliness and made the estate look untidy. When asked why the structures were said to be illegal when the LBIC had approved, he said approval did not mean that it was legal. And that those who sought LBIC approval were told that they should only erect temporal structures as the government might require the structures to be removed later.
Asked if the move was not wrongly timed, considering the current economic situation and the fact that hundreds of people would become unemployed, he said there would never be a right time for development to happen and that the only way for a society to remain sane and move forward is through such painful actions as these which are aimed at causing meaningful change to happen.
Though the structures may be illegal, the questions which remain unanswered are why the government allowed the illegality to go on for so long and how these people who have been forcefully put out of business are going to survive the recession and the trauma of watching their investments being reduced to rubble.
One also wonders why an alternative provision was not made before carrying out the demolition exercise and forcing people out of business. The estate retail market, some residents have said, should have been demolished and rebuilt in storey buildings to accommodate new occupants before demolishing the ones outside the market.
Security is also another concern as security posts have been demolished and the shops which used to provide light with their power generating sets to the unlit streets up till 9pm or beyond are no more. One wonders if the provision of electricity to the estate and renovation of the bad roads in the estate should not have been of more importance than this ill-timed move.
Ekpen writes from Lagos.
