By Christy Anyanwu
Many who visited Makoko area in Yaba Local Government Area of Lagos metropolis have continued to wonder why the waterfront has been allowed to remain such an eyesore. Indeed, the Lagos suburb has totally been ignored by successive administrations that have presided over the affairs of the state christened the Centre of Excellence.
From the top of the Third Mainland Bridge one sees a long stretch of wooden and bamboo shelters erected on stilts on the banks of the lagoon.
The residents are mainly Egun/Ilaje people, who are mostly fishermen. The place is a dirty, waterlogged slum that makes people sneer once you mention that you live or ever resided in Makoko. The simple reason is that many nefarious activities go on in the environment.
Right from the entrance of the community through Oyadiran Estate, where there are a few modern houses, what welcomes a first time visitor is dark, muddy water. In this place, use of facemasks appears to be forbidden as Sunday Sun reporter learnt.
Walking into the community with a facemask on, some of the residents pointedly told her to remove it, chorusing; “We don’t have Coronavirus here o.”
But besides the issue of protection from Coronavirus, wearing a facemask helps to block the stench that oozes into the air in the area. Evidently the olfactory system of the people has become so dull and insensitive to the permanent odour in the air.
In Apollo Community, Makoko, on a bright mildly warm day, a group of women sit outside their ‘compound’ deep in conversation. When approached by the reporter to know what they desire from the government, one of the women, Mayowa, who refused to disclose her full name, revealed that she holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Biology.
She said further: “In this place we have several degree and HND holders, but we need assistance from government to achieve our dreams. We have lots of graduates, but we are all jobless. The area is peaceful, no kidnapping, and you can’t hear of ritual killings in Makoko. We manage our lives here. The environment is not good, but the residence here is good. I was born here; I attended primary and secondary school here before going to higher institution.”
Mr Matthew Lopski, a citizen of Benin Republic, is a chef who lives in a wooden shanty structure built on stilts. To him Makoko is home, where he has lived for past 18 years. For him, it is just the best place to be.
It took the assistance of a young woman who offered to escort the reporter to the settlement, to facilitate movement. From the escort, you learn that a lot of the residents are from Cotonou, Republic of Benin and Togo. Most of them, she explained, are chefs, who cook for foreigners that live in Victoria Island and only return to Makoko where they reside. Most of the people who live in Makoko are driven to live there because of the astronomic cost of accommodation in other parts of the metropolis.
But a resident, Iyabo is simply not happy by the way people in Makoko are portrayed. “They said we are not good, but we have seen children from affluent homes coming to stay in our midst. Once they come they would not want to go back home. They always said they gained a lot of life experience from Makoko,” Iyabo said.
However, one major problem in the area is child molestation, with several cases of rape of under-aged girls. Shortly after COVID-19 lockdown was imposed, an eight-year-old deaf and dumb girl was raped in the community. To this, Mayowa retorted that child abuse is rampant all over Nigeria, arguing that Makoko should not be put forward as a case study.
But Mrs Olaide Ajayi, an executive of the Debora Group, a non-governmental organization (NGO) has a different perspective to life in Makoko.
For her, the children are not well catered for. Most of them are out of school. Their parents don’t even have time for their wards. Her group made it a point of duty to supply food to the children thrice a week. They started with cooked rice in a take-away pack and due to finance they now resolved to substitute for bread, eggs, and sachet tea instead of rice in three days.
According to her, she observed that moral decadency is high among the children the NGO fed during the period. “For a five-year-old to start talking about hard drugs is appalling. They call it by different names: Pawpaw, Banku, and they know where to buy such stuff. This is appalling.
“Our group decided not to only feed them, but to also give them moral instruction through the word of God. Our convening place is the Open Heaven Redeemed Christian Church of God in Apollo. We used their facility to host the children once a week and they look forward to our coming around. It has been a challenge to the NGO. We have about 300 children to feed. We implore the government and well-meaning Nigerians to come to the aid of these children because they are the future of the country, but they have to be re-orientated towards life,” Mrs Ajayi said.
The Baale of Ilajeland, Makoko, Chief Samuel Elejuwa, has a basket of needs he would like the government to meet for his people. Among these are the bad roads in Makoko.
Hear him: “During the time of JJ Jimoh as Adekunle Council chairman, he tried his best to repair the roads. When he left the job was badly handled by an engineer who took over the project. It was tug of war between us because I kept pointing to the fact that he was not doing the real thing. When they wanted to commission the said job, the engineer used huge sand to block the canal so that the seawater will not have access to the environment.
“Canal is so close to us and anytime it rains the water from the canal flows to our surroundings and it is waterlogged for days. That is how we have been living here. Many shop owners vacated their shops and school children can’t go to school. Even the water is certified as cholera-infested water.
“We do environmental sanitation here still no luck. We need government to allow the road to go back to the sea. We don’t have tap water here. The borehole I constructed is what we use here. We don’t have light in Makoko. We don’t have secondary school, we have primary school, but in a small space.
“The suffering here is enormous. Makoko used to be haven for bad gangs, but one of our chiefs assisted in putting an end to that. His name is Morgan China Odetunde. He was born and bred in Makoko. He’s really influential now and has assisted lots of our children in securing jobs in LAWMA, LASTMA, Immigration, and other government jobs. He ensured that our children were given slots to work and he has brought his company back home to Makoko.”
Elejuwa also pointed out that there are good and new structures in Makoko, but what is being highlighted all the time in the news is the fact that the place is a slum. He convinced the reporter to take another route (Adekunle) when leaving the community, so that she could see beautiful houses, stressing that those areas are also part of Makoko.