Despite repeated number of deaths associated with mudslides in some Lagos communities in the past few years, thousands of residents continue to dwell in danger-prone areas. Daily Trust reports.
A boom, the reverberating sound, enveloped Isale Oro, a community in the Ifako-Ijaiye area of Lagos State at about 12pm on July 19, 2017. The terrifying sound galvanised many residents in the neighbourhood towards its direction. And right before every panicky eye that raced to the scene was a two-bedroom flat, half of which had been claimed by a mudslide.
Isale Oro is a densely populated community located in a deep gully behind the famous Lagos African Church Grammar School, Ifako Ijaiye. The two-bedroom apartment that suffered the mudslide was the closest to the gully wall. Occupants were lucky to have been spared, as neighbours confirmed that the impending disaster had always issued a warning. Aside the small signpost erected on the gully wall on which read a warning, ‘Don’t build here’, residents in the area spoke of cracks on the gully wall a few days to the eventual spill-over, which indicated a looming catastrophe.
“I can say we have been sensing it because I saw some deep marks on the wall a few days before now,” a neighbour of the landlord of the affected two-bedroom flat, who was also at the scene, Jeremiah Abiodun, said. Perhaps, because the extent of the destruction didn’t involve any human life and the mudslide was not known to state officials, life has since gone on in the area.
The destroyed apartment was one out of about 200 other houses in the Isale Oro community. Most of the residents claim ignorance of how the community evolved, but Daily Trust investigation revealed that land allocations were illegally apportioned to the dwellers by land speculators, otherwise known as Omo Onile, many of whom have no fixed addresses.
The land allocations were not even of standard measurements of well-defined plots or half plots space demarcations. The poor space demarcation resulted in poor planning and haphazard erection of structures. Thus, along supposed street passages are drainages and flooded dumpsites.
Due to its topography, the community’s major source of water are wells. Through communal efforts, they tapped into public power, procuring poles and cables. Other basic amenities are non-existent. More than 2,000 live there, but there are no educational or health facilities, except those located on the highland, kilometres away.
Despite living in the gully with the attendant challenges, residents of Isale Oro who agreed to talk to our correspondent said they didn’t see any danger, as they argued they didn’t believe they were occupying a prohibited or illegal settlement.
“Although you may fault our manner of acquisition of this place, probably because we don’t have a government approved plan, those in government can’t deny knowledge of our residence here,” one of them told Daily Trust.
“The electricity distribution firm have metered many houses here with pre-paid metres, whereas many of those on the highland don’t even have such an advantage. Just a few weeks ago, state officials came with house numbers for us,” Jire Bolutife, a community leader at Isale Oro, said.
On each of the houses within Isale Oro, is an affixed identification badge that reads, “Lagos State Government, Office of the Governor, Property Identification Number…” The streets also have government street signs.
Isale Oro is not a lone case in the matter of gullies serving as residential areas in Lagos. Although there was no official figure as to the total number of communities existing in gullies in the state, Daily Trust visited seven in different parts of the state.
In the Idiagbon area in Ifako/Ijaiye local government, there exists the Ajakaiye gully community. Among some of the communities, there were a number of marijuana-smoking youths. Some respectable-looking residents of the community who spoke with Daily Trust on condition of anonymity, accused the youths of snatching bags, phones and other belongings.
The Ajakaiye gully has encroached deep into some houses situated on the higher land of the Idiagbon community but are closer to the gully, as it keeps eroding the houses’ foundational soil.
The situation is the same at the Sawmill community at Badore, in the Iba local development council area. Daily Trust investigation revealed that more than 10 houses within the community were built by one individual, who lives elsewhere but only visits to collect rent occasionally.
Abraham Suberm, a petroleum tanker driver and resident of the Sawmill community, said the community has existed for 15 years, four of which he has been part of. He said although he has never experienced any serious flood that threatened his stay, he nonetheless craved to leave. “I can’t afford rent elsewhere, so I have to stay for now,” he said.
Sam Bassey and Foluso Emmanuel gave similar excuses for residing in the sprawling Modupeola section of the gully community in Oke Ira in the Ojodu LCDA. Bassey, an auto mechanic, said he has a family of six to cater for on his meagre income, hence his decision to seek “refuge” at the Modupeola community.
Emmanuel, on the other hand, is a mother of three who resides in a bedroom apartment she said she built on her late husband’s plot of land in the area. “It has been through the boli (roasted plantain) business that I do that we were able to raise money we used to build the one-bedroom apartment my children and I are living in. And that is what we can afford,” she said.
Indeed, Oke Ira unarguably boasts one of the largest gully communities in Lagos. Starting from Modupeola Street and extending to Abiola and Ayodele Ariyo streets, behind the Ojodu LCDA Secretariat, to Powerline, it seems people just climb down into the ravine and build homes haphazardly.
At the backof the LCDA secretariat itself, some of the houses on Roselyn Edet Street appeared to be sinking already as the gully environment is swampy. The neighbouring communities had built a plank footbridge which connects both the Lagos and Ogun states ends of the gullies with one another. A toll collector always stations himself at the Lagos State end of the bridge to collect a N20 fee from every pedestrian.
A lecturer at the Department of Geography, University of Lagos, Dr Shakirudeen Odunuga, told Daily Trust that though it appeared many of the gullies in Lagos State had been stabilised and, hence, the human encroachments on them, the fact that such stabilisation cannot be said to have been achieved scientifically raised a red flag.
Dr Odunuga warned there was danger in people occupying gullies and re-channelling the drainages elsewhere, and by extension, creating more problems by leading flood to where it was not supposed to be. “The mere fact that a gully develops in an area shows that the environment is susceptible to life-consuming danger. And even if the soil has a solid formation, the fact that it has been modified in a manner that shows that it can cause havoc points to the fact that a disaster can happen, coupled with the stress people are putting on the soil in terms of infrastructural developments. These infrastructural developments can accelerate the rate at which mudslides can happen or buildings can cave in,” the lecturer said.
Odunuga couldn’t have been more apt. Deaths arising from mudslides have become a recurring decimal in Lagos in the last two years. In November 2015, for instance, four siblings of the Odiah family lost their lives at Orisa Street, Isheri Berger, in Ikosi-Isheri LCDA, Lagos, when a mudslide hit two buildings in the gully community.
Similarly, in September 2016, a 24-year-old lady, Faisa Mohammed, who got married two weeks earlier in Adamawa State, lost her life when a mudslide hit their makeshift apartment in the Kuata gully community at the Mechanic Village, Agidingbi, Ikeja. And in May 2017, two months before the Isale Oro gully mudslide referenced above, a deadly mudslide hit the Idohofia gully community in the Magodo area, Lagos, killing a girl.
At a recent stakeholders’ forum organised by the Lagos State Ministry of Housing, the Commissioner, Gbolahan Lawal, said the state was battling to achieve three million units of housing deficit. He said that to combat homelessness, the state has embarked on mass construction of 20,000 units of houses over the next four years.
Even that would be a drop in the ocean, the Commissioner himself admitted. He disclosed that to bridge the gap, government would be partnering with the private sector to provide affordable housing for the teeming populace.
When asked if the recent Property Identification Number (PIN) given to houses in the gullies was part of the government recognition of private operators’ engagements in provision of houses, the Commissioner replied, “No.”
Lawal’s counterpart in the Ministry of Physical Planning and Urban Development, Wasiu Anifowoshe, said government was not unaware of the environmental risks associated with people residing in the gullies and, as such, had issued quit notices across the state to all of those who reside there. Anifowoshe added that if some people refused to leave, the state government may have to forcefully eject them.
The Commissioner maintained that those residing in gullies were doing so illegally because the lands they were occupying were not allocated to them. “Anyone among them that has the permit to build, let him bring it out. If they do, I will refund everything they have invested in building such houses,” he said.
When reminded that some of the houses had been ascribed PIN identifications, Anifowoshe explained that what accords any building legal recognition in the state include having a building permit, soil test report and Certificate of Occupancy.
But in all the gully communities Daily Trust visited, residents denied receiving any quit notice from the state government.
There are those who believed that the cat-and-mouse game on the gully issue between the government and the gully residents is political. “This is a political era. Politicians will consider: If we go to demolish these places, who will vote for us?” Dr Odunuga said.
The lecturer advised that beyond the issue of political correctness, it has become imperative that there are periodic sensitisation programmes for the populace, because it is apparent that ignorance contributes to residency in death-prone gullies.
