Anna Sobie’s home was among many in a Lagos lagoon shanty town demolished by authorities, who critics accuse of gentrifying the prime waterfront area.
Lagos State government officials deny the allegation, saying they are demolishing parts of Makoko – the country’s biggest informal waterfront settlement – because it is expanding near high voltage power lines, posing a major health and safety risk.
Sobie and her children now sleep on broken planks where their house once stood, as rising costs and a housing crisis push more Lagos residents to the margins of society.
Amid this upheaval, as Sobie spoke to the BBC, canoes—steered with paddles or long bamboo poles—moved through the narrow waterways, carrying mattresses and sacks of clothes belonging to the displaced people.
Residents say demolitions began two days before Christmas, with excavation teams and armed police moving into the settlement.
In a joint statement last month, 10 non-governmental organisations said that “armed thugs, security personnel and demolition teams with bulldozers descended repeatedly on the community” to tear down homes and burn them.
“Homes were set on fire with little or no notice, in some cases while residents were still [inside],” the NGOs added.
When the BBC visited Makoko, smoke from the rubble of torched homes or from fires people had lit to burn damp wood and dry their clothes hung in the air.
Excavators worked along the shoreline. Houses built on wooden stilts over the lagoon were being pulled down. Their planks collapsed into the water below. Corrugated metal sheets fell from roofs and drifted between boats.
Makoko was founded in the 19th Century by fishing communities who have lived in the settlement ever since, along with other low-income families and migrants who come to Lagos in search of better opportunities.
Ownership of the lagoon is fiercely contested. The state government claims ownership under federal law, saying Makoko was built without planning permission or occupancy rights.
Older residents dispute this, saying the settlement predates modern Lagos, and they have what they call a customary right to it.
Estimates of Makoko’s population vary, from 80,000 to 200,000, but much of the settlement now lies in fragments.
The NGOs said that more than 10,000 people have been displaced after the destruction of more than 3,000 homes, as well as schools, clinics and churches. The state government has not given any figures for the buildings demolished.
Sobie’s home was among those destroyed.
“I was inside when it started,” she says. “The noise was very loud. When we came out, we saw the excavator.”
She says there was little time to move her family’s belongings.
Her son Solomon’s school in Makoko was demolished the same day.
Sobie’s family moved briefly into a building nearby. That, too, was later pulled down.
“We’re sleeping in an open space and don’t have another place to go,” Sobie says, noting that belongings are being set ablaze.
Like many other children, Solomon no longer goes to school. He now helps his mother gather firewood from collapsed houses, pulling loose planks from the debris to sell.
Despite demolition, traders continue their business by canoe through the remaining homes, selling essentials.
Many other traders lost their goods and can no longer do business after their homes were demolished or torched.
With the lagoon central to their lives, residents protest efforts to force them out of Makoko.
More than 1,000 angry residents marched last week to the state legislature, the House of Assembly, demanding an audience with Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, whose offices are nearby.
But when protesters gathered, police responded by firing tear gas. According to protesters, at least one person was injured in the ensuing chaos.
Community leaders say tear gas was used during the demolitions, allegedly causing five deaths, including children.
“Children were distressed, some became ill, and some needed hospital attention as a result of the tear gas,” Sobie tells the BBC.
The Lagos State government says it is unaware of its personnel using tear gas or of deaths linked to the demolitions.
Speaking to the BBC, the state’s commissioner for information, Gbenga Omotoso, says that any such claims would be investigated.
“We would determine the actual cause of death,” he says. “Our personnel will not knowingly kill anybody.”
Lagos lawmakers said that community leaders have been invited to a meeting on Tuesday to discuss their concerns.
The state government has defended the demolitions, saying they are targeting homes built beneath high-voltage power lines.
“No responsible government anywhere in the world can allow people to live directly under high-tension cables. Nor can they let residents obstruct vital waterways,” the governor’s special adviser on urban development, Olajide Abiodun Babatunde, said in a statement.
Governor Sanwo-Olu said that affected families would be provided with financial grants and other assistance, and it was wrong to accuse him of “destroying” Makoko.
He raised concern that shanties were “sprawling” at an “incredible speed.” They are approaching the Third Mainland Bridge, the longest and busiest of the three bridges connecting the mainland to the islands. These islands are the commercial heart of the city and home to its wealthiest neighbourhoods.
For the governor, this spells danger.
“There are high-tension power lines right underneath there. I am not going to sit down, and something will drop off, and in one day, over 100 to 500 people will die,” he was quoted by local media as saying.
“So, what we have done is that we just pushed them back,” he added.
Lagos-based real estate developer Peacemaker Afolabi tells the BBC that demand for land in the city is huge.
“Everywhere in Lagos is prime land,” he says. “And waterfront is always prime.”
Some residents suspect that the demolitions are aimed at clearing the area for private developments, including luxury homes.
The government repeatedly denies demolition aims, but residents’ suspicion remains.
In an article published in the US-based Atlanta Tribune, Nigerian journalist Emmanuel Abara Benson argues that Makoko is the “most painful symbol” of Lagos’s gentrification.
“This is not the slow, decades-long gentrification often seen in Western cities. It’s a rapid, almost violent reshaping that is already forcing millions of residents to the margins,” he writes.
“In the next few years, Lagos may look more polished and globally appealing. But for many of its people, it will also become profoundly unliveable.”
In their joint statement, the NGOs said that demolitions in Makoko and other settlements last year were part of a “sinister agenda to grab land”.
“These actions against thousands of peaceful, hardworking residents represent a deliberate pattern of state-enabled violence against the urban poor, carried out to clear valuable land for elite interests and private mega-developments,” the NGOs said.
An official report released last year showed that while the city’s “housing supply improved significantly from 1.4 million units in 2016 to over 2.57 million units in 2025, it has not kept pace with demand”.
“The housing deficit has thus grown from approximately 2.95 million units in 2016 to 3.4 million in 2025, a 15 per cent increase,” Nigeria’s Punch newspaper quoted the report as saying.
Rapid population growth, rising rents and limited access to formal housing have pushed many low-income residents into informal settlements, particularly along waterfronts and transport corridors.
Authorities previously demolished Makoko homes, but a 2017 court order temporarily prevented forced evictions without notice, compensation or resettlement.
Megan Chapman, co-director of the Justice and Empowerment Initiatives campaign group, says the government has failed to provide alternative accommodation to residents affected by the latest demolitions.
“They have to identify everyone who will be affected and make arrangements before homes are lost,” she tells the BBC.
“When people are removed like this, it affects livelihoods. It disrupts family structures and changes how communities function over time.”
When the BBC was in Makoko, boys were sitting along the lagoon, repairing their broken fishing nets. Children moved between piles of debris, collecting firewood from collapsed structures.
A tractor pulled away from what was once a house. Only a few buildings remained standing, including the homes of traditional leaders.
Elizabeth Kakisiwe says she sleeps nearby.
Each evening, she lays wooden boards on damp ground for her children and packs them away again in the morning.
“We were at the market when it started,” she says. “When I came back, my house was gone.”
She says there was no clear warning and no time to remove belongings. They lost clothes, cooking utensils, and mattresses. When rain fell days later, they were drenched.
“At night, it can be very cold,” she says. “If the children feel sick, we give them paracetamol.”
Cooking has become difficult, she says, because the rain has made the ground wet and rats are moving through the debris.
“Yesterday, we only drank garri,” Kakisiwe says, referring to a popular cassava-based meal that is often made as a drink. “There is nothing to cook.”
Expressing a similar view, Sobie says: “The suffering is much. A lot of people have been dying. We just don’t know what to say. It’s only God that can help us.”