Pastor Isong Uyoh who oversees a church in the Federal Capital Territory was having a nap in his living room in an estate in Lokogoma whenOn moving closer, our correspondent observed that the room had
no doors or ceiling and the floor was not tiled. Personal effects and musical instruments coated with dust littered the floor as the cleric snoozed. Uyoh had converted the abandoned building into a home where he lived with his wife and daughters.
“Though the building has no doors and windows, I don’t feel unsafe at night; God is my security,” he claimed. Uyoh and Akaeme are among many FCT residents living in unsafe buildings and unplanned settlements without access to basic amenities or infrastructure. Investigations show that a large population of youths mostly from the North are also living in makeshift structures erected illegally on private and public lands. Checks showed that many commercial motorcyclists popularly known asriders live together in such shanty structures in different parts of the FCT including Utako, Jabi, Gwarimpa, Nyanya, Byazin and other areas. The makeshift homes were mostly built with recycled wood, zinc and aluminium products scavenged from construction sites.
The leader of the IDPs, Philemon Emmanuel, said 1,573 displaced persons including children were living in shanties without electricity, potable water, toilet facilities or security. A similar settlement located opposite a popular eatery in Jabi is an eyesore. Rows of drinking joints and brothels dot the area which is a favourite spot of commercial vehicle drivers and artisans. Narrow and overflowing dirty gutters snake around the area as the atmosphere reeks of decay. Garbage litters the ground. The residents were said to have been living there for many years and accustomed to the base lifestyle.
“Successive governments have allowed economic inequality in Nigeria to reach extreme levels, a fact that is clearly evident in the housing sector. Meanwhile, newly built luxury dwellings are springing up throughout cities – made possible often through the forced eviction of poor communities,” she said in her preliminary report on the housing crisis in Nigeria which would be presented in full to the Human Rights Council this month.
“I saw people living under bridges and in informal settlements in conditions that are equivalent to homelessness. The conditions of homelessness are extreme, constituting a threat to personal security, health and to life itself,” Farha noted. Farha observed that the 2012 National IDP Policy included the right to housing for internally displaced persons. She, however, regretted that those rights, included in the 2009 African Union Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa ratified by Nigeria in April 2012, weren’t currently enforceable by domestic courts.
To address the situation, the Federal Capital Territory Administration is proposing a special fund to acquire the buildings from their owners and resell them to workers under its mass housing scheme.
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