Displaced Egun community have nowhere to go, throng State house in protest
The aftermath of the brutal clash between some irate Yoruba youths and the Egun community in Otodo Gbame, a slum in the Lekki Phase 1 area of Lagos has led to a protest of aggrieved residents who laid siege on the State house on Tuesday.
Since the attack that saw houses razed and several persons drowned, there has been an unrest in the community as the surviving residents now have no where to go.
New reports, according to a statement by the Nigerian Slum/Informal Settlement Federation claim police have, instead of lessening the suffering, added to the people’s pain by leading a demolition of the remaining structures that survived the inferno.
“Just after midnight, in the wee hours of 10 November 2016, the police came back with a bulldozer that began to demolish the remainder of the community in the dead of night, when residents and newly homeless were sleeping,” it stated.
The statement also claim that the forceful eviction of the Egun community from the area is believed to have been masterminded by a group of thugs led by a member of the Eleguishi chieftaincy family.
Several homeless residents of the community thronged the premises of the Lagos State government and demanded that it comes to their aid.
A protester, Rasheed Shittu told The Cable that “the protest is stopping other workers that have a home to go to, these people don’t have any other place to go, they have demolished their houses, look at females, look at children outside. If you notice, they’ve been sleeping on water, canoe, boat.
“The protest is going to take as long as they are ready to address them, compensate the affected victims, stop the burning of the community and illegal demolition,” he said.
The Nigerian Slum/Informal Settlement Federation, on behalf of the helpless residents, demanded that the state government make “immediate provision of relief materials and emergency shelter” for the “over 30,000 hard-working, law-abiding citizens from Otodo Gbame.”
