Demolition And The Mirror Of Makoko -By Dr. Austin Orette

Here we go again! Lagos State wants to demolish Makoko. How do these people sleep at Night? Do these politicians know any of the people living in Makoko? Why now?

Makoko has become an organic city that functions without government for more than thirty years. They have their city government and laws like any self-governing people. These people have never seen the hand of government unless they are being criminalized.

This is a ploy. What is behind the rush to demolish this place that has gained historical relevance in Nigeria? The Negligent government of Lagos state doesn’t want a mirror held to it.

Makoko is an eye sore to the government just like the government is an eye sore to the inhabitants of Makoko. What kind of government will allow people to wallow in that filth for more than thirty years? It is very obvious that the average Nigerian sees the government only when it is coming to collect taxes, inflict bodily injuries and destroy the property of the citizens without a care. The people in government do not think that they have a responsibility towards the citizens that “elected “the leaders.

Government in Nigeria is a force that has mal intent towards the average Nigerian. From check points to military raids of villages in the Niger Delta and all over, the government intent is clear. It can destroy your property and still bar you from seeking legal redress. This is what the military did and Fela lost his house and his antagonist became president not once but twice.

The return to power of two former military rulers was due to the cognitive dissonance of the Nigerian that is ruled by fear. This is a pathological adaptation of severely traumatized people. This later morphed into Stockholm syndrome that makes Nigeria resurrect dead leaders.

Nigerians are always looking for leaders of yesterday to lead them into tomorrow. They are afraid of anything new. Instead of going forward, they are glued and ready for a journey to yesterday. When people become so confused, the future fades away and only the past is real.

This romance with the past is an existential threat to Nigeria. A large chunk of citizens in their rumination are looking backward to the treasonous general who will overthrow the government. They have forgotten that it was the soldiers that destroyed Nigeria. If anything good will come from the soldiers, the former military rulers could have given us inkling. They were a colossal failure.

Forward thinking in Nigeria is scary. This fear leads to a romance with the past that never existed. From the aforementioned, it can be surmised that the average Nigerian who lived through various military dictatorships in Nigeria suffers from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). The Nigerian military did the worst thing to Nigeria. For more than fifty years, the Nigerian military infantilized the Nigerian citizen. The Nigerian military made the Nigerian to be passive. He was made powerless and passive for more than fifty years. The citizens were made irrelevant in the affairs of the country to the point where they cannot oppose illegal actions by the government. This paternalism made the Nigerian ill equipped to tackle the complex miasma of governance.

This passivity is akin to the behavior of a wounded animal. He becomes solitary and dejected. When palliatives arrive, he is first on the line if there is one. He rushes in before the palliative is finished. He does not see the fact that he has been reduced to a beggar in his own estate. He starts seeing the affairs of Nigeria as an alien from a distance. If he raises his voice, thugs were sent by the leaders to beat him up. If there is a protest, he has no energy to carry the placards. He needs his energy to survive. So he sits alone and waits for tomorrow if tomorrow will come.

Tomorrow, we will see him working for the politician as a thug and enforcer. He will celebrate his success in opulence as long as he hurts other people on behalf of his pay master. By this time, he has become numb and detached from society so he could care less about Makoko as he will vigorously assist in the demolition.

Makoko is a thriving village of fishermen who have organized themselves into a functioning unit. The indicators there show that the place has a lower crime rate than the rest of Lagos.

Anytime Nigerians attain something for themselves, an absent government that has been asleep suddenly wakes up to force modernity on people who just want to be left alone.

Makoko and other slums in Lagos came to be because of the lack of environmental and housing policies in Lagos State. There is a chronic shortage of housing in Lagos. The average individual is made to pay three years rent in advance for a cubicle in a filthy environment with hostile landlords. Makoko is the ingenuity of the Nigerian trying to make a way where there is no way.

With fiat, the government has criminalized them. They will be raided and thrown into jail without anyone asking the question: What is their crime? Why is the Lagos State government trying to steal that land and give it to the super rich in Nigeria? The people who stole Magodo were the Who is who in Nigeria. Is this another Magodo in the making? Yes. The typical Nigerian leader pays no attention to the land unless they want to steal it for oil as in the Niger Delta or want to repurpose it for rich people.

No matter the Situation, the various governments in Nigeria are the first to use violence. This puts the people in a perpetual state of fear and anxiety which has paralyzed the thinking of the average Nigerian.

In Nigeria, those in power are absolute monarchs and they have an all or none approach to development. They lack the nuances and contradictory understandings of existence. To them, everything is concrete. They want to save Nigeria from Nigerians and make it a show piece to the world that they are “civilized “. This is the lie the naive Nigerian leaders tell themselves. They don’t know that development should be people centered. You cannot develop a country for a zero population.

Developing the people is the core mission of leaders around the World. Develop the people and the people will develop their country to the furthest reaches of their aspirations. These leaders pour money into airports and other fancy facilities for the rich 1% and leave the roads that 99% of Nigeria uses as death traps. No matter what is said, these people with absolute power will still trample and violate the rights of those people in Makoko. These so-called leaders will send thugs to that place and overnight the place is demolished and the people are pushed further into nothingness. Eventually the residents of Makoko will win in court and the Lagos State government will disobey the court orders and hand over Makoko to his rich friends as they did to the people of Magodo.

As of this time, there is no court document, no question is asked. The people of Makoko as usual will see the bulldozers before they know their abode is being demolished. Some will lose their lives in the process as demolition will surely go on while the people are still sleeping inside their abode.

This is the cruelty of Nigerian leaders. Their extreme opulence cannot make them put themselves in the shoes of those who are living in Makoko. The gap between the rich and poor in Nigeria is so wide that the average Nigerian politician lacks the imagination to put himself in the place of those they are subjecting to this extreme cruelty and wanton destruction of their abode . The opulence of the elite in Nigeria is a journey to Xanadu. This makes them very insensitive to the plight of the people.

The agony of the loss that results from this disaster perpetrated against the people and their agency is too frightful to the imagination. If the government is democratic, they will not use brigandage and subterfuge to solve the problem of Makoko. The demolition and destruction of people’s homes is what has put the Nigerian citizen into a state of learned helplessness and catatonic behavior, which is a pathological adaptation to bad governance. It is a psychological trauma. The citizen begins to be afraid of questioning authority. Anytime he talks about his ordeal, he becomes the enemy of the state. His mere presence is criminalized. He becomes a person who is not grateful for his palliative. These gross violations make him see his relationship with the government as adversarial.

In a functioning society, the government is forced to meet the standards of eminent domain before such demolition is done. Nigeria is not normal and it is not a functioning society because those who lead have no sense of responsibility towards the citizens. They consider the citizens as a nuisance. This is absolute tyranny.

Are we in a democracy? No. We can never be a democracy until we force those we elect to follow the rule of law in their dealings with us. We cannot call the current experiment a democracy when those we elect tear gas us when we petition through peaceful protest. We are not a democracy when those we elect tell us how to vote and force themselves on us. If we are a democracy, we will not have elected officials behaving like absolute monarchs with militaristic diktats.

What was the government doing when Makoko festered? Did they provide a blueprint? No. Did they provide amenities? No. After Venice is reimagined here comes the destructive impetus of a government without reason to zero out the history of a people who dared to be self-sufficient without an oppressive government that lacks sensitivity to the plight of the people, women and children who will be displaced from the place they call home. There will be no alternative arrangements because in Nigeria, the leaders see the people as being in the way of development.

Why don’t they just drop an atomic bomb and develop the city from scratch. The people will be gone. Problem will be solved. There will be no one to protest or impede the animation of the environment.

Nigerian politicians are the only group of leaders in the world who think the people are a cog in their will of development. This is why they make laws to rig themselves back into power. They consider the Nigerian citizen an accidental presence. The results of their anti-people policies that have pauperized the people are there for anyone to see.

Why can’t they just blow the nation up and invite New Yorkers for a better environment for a dirty December? The world will praise them for their modernity that sacrificed their citizens in order to look like New York or London. This is not different from the IMF loans that pauperized Nigerians.

These people find it easier to deal with concrete than humans. Concrete knows concrete. It is easier to wallop concrete into shape than to educate a child and provide good healthcare. It is a good marriage as those coming from Europe and America love the wildlife in Africa more than the people. The first animals they see are the beasts of no nation that call themselves leaders. Animals treat their kind better than the way Nigeria leaders treat their fellow human beings and citizens.

Do we need to visit the zoo to improve our humanity? It is almost becoming a crime to be a citizen in Nigeria. It is possible that the people are running away before these politicians make it illegal to be Nigerian.

Whether it is Makoko or Magodo, the story is the same. This is how slums in Nigeria developed. These people waited for the government and there was none. As soon as they are settled through their ingenuity, the government shows up with bulldozers. The only solution the governments have is demolition. If someone talks about providing amenities, the government falls asleep and dreams about its next victim. In most cases, the pure water seller on the street will be violated by government agencies that will destroy the bag of water. Why is the child not in school? The government goes back into slumber. History, they say, doesn’t repeat itself. It Rhymes.

DR AUSTIN ORETTE WRITES FROM HOUSTON, TEXAS