Up First from NPR - The human cost of building the Dubai of Africa

Episode Date: May 17, 2026

For many of the poorest residents in Lagos, Nigeria, the land their families have lived on for generations is now being violently seized by the government to build luxury condos. The communities are fighting back, but even court injunctions haven’t stopped the bulldozers. This week on The Sunday Story, NPR’s Emmanuel Akinwotu goes to these sites of destruction and talks to those who have lost everything in this race to develop one of the world’s fastest-growing megacities.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

I'm Ayesha Rosco, and this is a Sunday story from up first. Lagos, Nigeria is one of the world's fastest growing megacities. It's currently home to nearly 20 million people, and by the end of the century, it's projected to be the most populous city in the world, with 88 million residents. Lagos is already considered one of the most vibrant economic hubs in Africa. It has multi-million-dollar tech firms, one of the world's biggest film industries, Naliwood,

and a thriving music scene centered on Afrobeat. To support the influx of industries and people, new infrastructure and housing projects are being built at a rapid pace. Welcome to Echo Atlantic, the future of African real estate. The Nigerian government is working closely with developers, hoping to turn Lagos into a gleaming global destination, much like Dubai. We believe that Echo Atlantic is more than just a city. It's an opportunity to dream, venture, and prosper in a world-class environment.

But many of these developments are not targeted at housing the residents who need it the most. There's an explosion of luxury high-rises and hubs for the wealthy, especially along the waterfront, fueling a push to reclaim land on the coastal lagoons and bays. The problem is much of this land is already home to some of the city's most vulnerable people. And in many cases, it's being violently taken from them. He's carrying a machete, he's pointing at me. No, no, no, no. When we come back, the brutal human cost of development in an African megacity.

Stay with us. I'm Aisha Roscoe, and this is the Sunday story from Up First. Today we're going to Lagos, a city undergoing a rapid transformation, which is bringing both opportunity and despair. Joining me now is NPR's Africa correspondent, Emmanuel Akenwatu. Emmanuel, welcome. Thanks for having me. And, Emmanuel, you're actually here in D.C. right now, which is the first for us, for us to be in the same spot, even though we've talked a lot. Yeah, exactly.

But you live in Lagos, right? That's right. I've been there for about 10 years now. And so I've never had the opportunity to visit. Paint me a picture of what the city feels like. Well, Lagos is a fascinating place and really a paradox. You know, it's a city where there's so many dizzying extremes intimately woven together. In a way, it's quite similar to cities like New York or Mumbai.

It has this restless energy and entrepreneurialism really everywhere you turn. virtually everyone has a quote-unquote side hustle here. You know, you go to the bank and the teller helping you is working there during the day, but at night they might be a nail tech or a beautician. So what about, like, the city itself, like the geography of it? I know it's on the Atlantic Ocean. Are we talking about, like, you know, beachfront, like L.A. or canals, like Venice? Well, the city is made up of what's a larger mainland and then a lagoon,

which spills out into a cluster of islands right along the Atlantic Ocean. And it feeds this network of creeks that snake across the city. Lagos is actually a Portuguese word meaning lakes, and it was named by an explorer from Portugal. But despite being really defined by water, there isn't really an efficient water transport system. It's a densely populated city with few bridges and port in the city roads. It can be really tough to navigate.

At times, really unbearable traffic. But, you know, it's a really Lagos thing to turn everything into an opportunity. And there's this whole industry that really relies on traffic to sell on the streets where you can buy anything from drinks to household furniture. In a way, it's like New York, people are drawn to the pace, the energy of the city. Lagos is just always on. It's 24 hours. It never sleeps. People talk about the craziness of Lagos, but also how that hectic nature also breeds opportunity.

in different ways. People don't really wait or ask for space. They take it. Ababa Ayomide Adilani, he put it to me this way. Once you are a creative person, you can proceed in Lagos. If you are not smart,

Lagos will show you what they call smartness. Even if you are smart before, Lagos will show you another form of smartness. That's Lagos for you. Yeah, I mean, It sounds like this is a place for the go-getters. Like, this is a place for the people who are going to, they're going to make it anyway.

They've got to make it. Yeah. And in many ways, that's really the kind of law of the city. But really what's become clear over time is that this hope and idealism around this story of Lagos is increasingly in short supply. The daily reality for most people who live here is not really of opportunity, but extreme precarious.

So what does that precarity or extreme precarity look like? So it's estimated that as many as 5,000 people come here every day from other parts of Nigeria and the wider region. And many of them come with very little. They might have big dreams, but they don't have much money. So that's a huge influx of people. I would think that it's a lot of pressure on the cities. So how is Lagos managing all of that? Well, the short answer is it's not.

It's becoming less livable. There's a shortage of clean water in some areas. Power is also scarce. Most people with resources rely on generators. There's been a huge sanitation problem. The city recently installed about 1,700 public toilets to try and stop people from going to the bathroom, in the canals or on the street.

But they cost money, so not everyone can afford them. And the city is developing, but not at all enough. and really not in a way that is helping the majority of the people who live there. Arguably, it's developing in a way that is actually making life worse. And one clear example of that is what's happening with housing and the basic question of where people are able to live. Is the government building new housing projects or, you know, just building new housing stock? Well, there's a lot of new apartment blocks being built.

Actually, the sheer number of them is staggering. But overwhelmingly, they're luxury developments. You know, apartment selling for millions of dollars, being rented out to people who can afford them only because really they're paid in foreign currency or they're extremely wealthy. So then that's still out of reach for most people. Exactly.

And it's not just that people can't afford them. It's also that these developments are displacing tens of thousands of people, especially along the coast. And Aisha, when I say displacing, I mean they're losing their homes and in some cases they're losing their lives. So what's happening? Well, to understand, I mean, take you to one of these areas.

A vast waterfront community called Makoko. It's been around since the 1800s. It's sometimes described as the Venice of Nigeria because it's largely built on wooden stilts perched along the Lagos Lagoon. It's been called the world's largest floating Islam. And historically it's been a fishing village of sorts, but over time it's degraded and become this visually striking symbol, really of complete neglect by the government, except for when

they come to campaign there during elections. You know, there's no infrastructure, no sanitation, no power. There are no pedestrian bridges to cross the waterways. So the communities put up these wobbly panks instead. The creeks within the community are black and really filthy. People urinate and defecate into it and it's also a dumping ground for garbage. There's no state electricity. People who can afford it use generators or solar power.

There's no running water so people have to buy their drinking water in kegs and it's expensive. People navigate Makoko on these really shallow canoes that easily tip if you don't sit still. And people are really wary of journalists, more than any place I've ever been to.

And that's because for a long time Makoko has been this magnet for photographers, creatives, capturing these bleak images and footage of children and mothers on canoes, people scavenging for metal in the Black Creeks, and countless NGOs have come through here, finding it very easy to secure funding to work in Makoko, but really for projects that sometimes fail to make any real difference. I mean, it sounds so bleak, the landscape that people are having to live in

and try to survive in. And that's like such a juxtaposition to the luxury high rises that are rising all around the city. The extremes are insane. And there's a lot of bitterness around this in Makoko because many of the residents are actually descendants of some of the early settlers to Lagos

when it was this thriving port city under British colonial rule. But over the last few decades, waterfront communities like Makoko have increasingly been seen by the government and a lot of private interests as prime real estate. So what's been happening in Makoko? Well, in January and February this year, the government sent in demolition crews and police

to bulldoze homes and businesses to make way for future development. And when they were done, about 20,000 people had been displaced. And it's not just in Makoko, it's happening in other informal settlements in Lagos, especially along the waterfront. About a year ago, I reported on the same thing happening at a century-old. riverside settlement called Ila Gell-Tumara. And as I watched, excavators destroyed hundreds of concrete homes and shanties, and police shot live rounds and tear gas, causing a real panic.

People barely had enough time to gather their things as their homes were just crushed. It was utterly heartbreaking. People were weeping, dazed, angry. There was dust everywhere. At points, it was even difficult to see. clearly. I mean, that must have been really hard to watch. And also just to, I mean, for the people going through it, it's just unimaginable.

Yeah, just very brutal. You know, evictions happen all over the world. They're not exclusive to Lagos, but what really has struck me more than anything covering these mass evictions is the level of violence. The day before the demolitions, the government had actually assured the residents in Otamara that nothing would have. happen because there was a high court order in place and that they were safe. And this order actually prohibited any evictions before relocating residents. But the evictions happened anyway. At the scene, I spoke to a 45-year-old man called Albert Bamidele.

He was just pacing around helplessly when I went to speak to him. He said what pained him is that they wouldn't even just give him a few minutes to save his belongings. I could not take anything. My computer system, everything was clush. A property was clutch inside there. Then I met a 62-year-old woman added to Bambadi. She was just weeping on the roadside, near her mattress, her fan, and some bags of clothes,

some documents and pictures that she'd grabbed from her home before it was destroyed. She told me she was born there, and now her home and business was gone. And speaking in Yoruba, she just kept saying, where is she meant to go now? She's lost everything. And she kept saying, Yjoba, one niwalaara go, longba. And she kept saying, Yjoba, one niwalara, one niwalara, meaning the government is oppressing us. They're oppressing us.

And while people were just coming to terms with really what they had just lost and the suffering, All around us there were these groups of young men armed with machetes and sticks. They were actually alongside the police, working with them, intimidating, even beating residents who tried to protect their homes or collect their possessions.

And they were also rushing at anyone who was documenting this destruction. And when they saw me doing interviews, they came for me too. Carin a machete, he's pointing at me. They grab me and they drag me out of the area. They're just walking me out. They're saying I can't come in here.

They can't do that. With sticks and machete saying I can't stay here. But no press here. That's what they just say. We should leave. They're very violent. Someone had a machete in one and saying. My goodness.

I mean, I'm glad that you're all right. I mean, but it sounds just really terrifying. Yes, it was scary in the moment. And I think to be honest, it's something that I've come to expect covering these situations now for years. It's actually really a feature of these demolitions. The violence that you see unfolding there. They are these chaotic, extremely violent and deadly situations. And they are that way almost by design.

Often it feels like the cruelty is the point. Last year, I went to another demolition at a World's Frank settlement called Owaronschuki, where about 10,000 people were displayed. And again, people had gathered what they could from their homes, and they put them in heaps on the ground. Then days after the demolitions, police came back and set fire across all the settlement. You know, they burnt the belongings that people had salvaged

so that they could move them to wherever else they were going to stay. But they weren't even given that dignity. Everything in the site was torched. Stay with us. I'm Aisha Roscoe, and this is the Sunday story from up first. Joining me now is NPR's Africa correspondent, Emmanuel Akenwoto. You said that it sometimes seems like the cruelty is the point, and obviously you can't get into the mind of the people who are doing all the demolitions,

but it doesn't seem like to you from what you're seeing, that part of this is just to overwhelm people, scare people, so that they aren't fighting back. It feels like there's this operation to, in a way, kind of cleanse the city, to kind of sanitize it, to develop it, they would say, and that there are these areas full of tens of thousands of people who have made a life there,

sometimes for decades, sometimes for more than a century. But the government sees them actually as a problem. Their existence on that site is really an issue they're trying to solve. rather than seeing these people as actually people who they have a responsibility to protect, to actually provide for. And when they are clearing them from these places, they're not treating them like human beings. Actually, they're treating them like a nuisance. And the violence, in a way, reinforces their status in this society

and really their place in this new developed Lagos is actually something that is not for them. Actually, the development is for the people who can afford it. And the people who are in the way are just expendable. You know, I met a 66-year-old man there. His name was Kunle Ogumbo Ali. And he was just walking around aimlessly, around this property of his that had been burnt down to the ground.

His home was destroyed, and he was just there alone talking to himself. I just went close to him, and he was saying, I'm elderly, what work am I meant to do now to survive? What am I supposed to do? They're slowly killing us. And the truth is, they are. In so many of these demolitions, people are dying.

There are several stories of people who were crushed in their homes, either because they didn't have the time to escape. In one case I heard someone was refusing to leave, and the workers demolished the house with the house. person in it. In the demolitions in Makoko this year, at least 11 people died during the evictions according to the community groups I spoke to, and they included children and even newborn babies. One of the babies was just a few days old, and she died in the arms of her mother, Edith Amosun. Amosun told me she was born in Makoko and that on the day of the demolitions, she grabbed her daughter

just as the excavators were, smashing her wooden home, which was built on stilts along the lagoon. But she said even escaping was an ordeal, because police were firing tear gas, which landed near her canoe. She was carrying her baby, and then the boat capsized. She told me she passed out, and she woke up in hospital to discover her daughter had died. In Yoruba tradition, you name children on the eighth day after they are born

and her daughter was less than a week old. But she told me she was going to name her Moranica, meaning someone to look after or to cherish. I mean, it's a beautiful name. It is, and she chose that name because she'd already lost two of her children to illness. By calling her Morinica, it was really her way of her. of saying to her daughter to stay alive, to be her companion, and to be cherished by her and her family. But then, in less than a week, her daughter was dead.

It's such a horrific story. What does the government say about this? Well, often, the government lays the blame on the residents of these settlements. And at a press conference, the governor of Lagos, Babachi de Saint-Wolu, he defended what they were doing. He rejected the claim that. this was a kind of land grab and instead he said it was all about public safety. Of what interest will it be for government

to want to unduly demolish anybody's? What interest? If it is not for the overall safety of these citizens that we're talking about. He said the residents were warned not to build wooden homes near a power line near Makoko and that only homes within 150 metres

to the power line were demolished. So what we're doing is that we're not we're not demolishing the whole of Makoko. We're clearing people to stay off behind the high tension. But when we went to Makoko, his words just didn't stack up. Edith Amosson took me on a canoe to where her home once stood. It was actually about 500 metres from the power line,

but it was still destroyed, like hundreds of other homes. And so many of the residents in the community really see this concern around public safety as a pretext to gradually clear them away. And last month, the Lagos State Parliament said that Makul's residents should be moved to a new, cleaner, a more fitting site on the outskirts of Lagos,

which is exactly what the community feared. You've mentioned that these communities were at times protected by court orders. How did the court orders come about? Well, for years, there's been this. this growing grassroots movement of local organizations. They've been organizing protests, legal challenges to stop these demolitions. And they've also been finding ways to get these stories in the media to raise awareness.

And one of the groups that's really helping this movement is an organization called Justice Empowerment Initiative, or GEI. And it was founded by an American woman, Megan Chapman. The transformation of coastal communities and beachfront areas. into places that are for, you know, the relatively wealthy and privileged is nothing new in Lagos. From the community's perspective, it's like, oh, now development has come and that means we're going to be evicted because there are, you know, more powerful and wealthy people who now have seen the value of this place that we've called home for many years.

And she's kind of a powerhouse. She's basically trained dozens of people from these communities to be paralegals, going to court is expensive, and these are poor communities, but through their work, now they can represent their own interests and understand their protections under Nigerian law. And these efforts have led to some real victories, including orders from the Lagos High Court banning demolitions in communities unless residents are first consulted and then resettled. And these seemed like huge victories over the government and over very powerful private interests. But as we saw in So many cases like Ilajiao-Tumara, like Owaron Shoki, and Makoko,

these court orders don't have the same way people thought they would. The orders have been routinely ignored, and the demolitions have happened anyway. So, I mean, if the court orders don't stop the demolitions, I mean, what can the community do? They've been holding protests at the legal state government offices. They've been demanding to meet their representatives, demanding to be compensated. But virtually nothing meaningful has come from it. The government says compensation has been initiated in some cases,

but the residents largely deny this, and the demolitions are continuing. And as Megan Chapman told me, people are beginning to lose hope. It's so heartbreaking to watch them lose everything, watch someone who has been a leader in their community, maybe a Baba Loja, the market leader in his community, be turned into someone who is just begging.

and so they've lost everything. And now, from one day to the next, they don't know what to eat. So what has happened to all those people who've lost their homes and their possessions? Where have they gone? In some cases, they're squatting in the communities that were demolished. In a warren shockey, for example, weeks after the demolitions, a destroyed church was still open. They were still holding services there.

sitting on plastic chairs and the rubble. Many people are just homeless. We met one family sleeping under a bridge near where their home was destroyed. The mother is Amaka Kingsley. She's a 45-year-old fruit seller. They say also. She spoke to me in Pigeon,

and she told me that before the demolitions, she and her husband and her four children had been living in a rental house in Otomara. But now their home is here, under the Echo Bridge in Lagos. They sleep on a sheet of cardboard laid out on the ground under a mosquito net. Hungry, hungry, my children. Nothing, nothing.

And Kingsley told me she's constantly anxious. It's the first time she's ever lived on the street. It's dangerous at night under the bridge. So to keep her kids safe, she sleeps with a rope tying her to her children. The youngest is not quite two years old. And Kingsley says even then she's still barely safe. sleeps, panicking that someone's going to try and take them away. Yeah, I mean, that is just so difficult.

I mean, I can't imagine. Do these residents have any legal claim to the land and the homes that have been forcibly taken from them? Absolutely. The thing is, under Nigerian law, the government is the ultimate owner of all land. It can sell and it can demand land back as long as there's compensation. but often the government or the traditional rulers who have a stake in redevelopment will claim that these residents are there illegally, but largely they're not.

In many cases, actually, they've been there for decades recognised by the state. These communities even have their own polling stations and are regular campaign stops for politicians who canvass votes there. Many of these residents have secured deeds, legal documents from the same government agencies that are now trying to displace them. And the irony is, as the government works to transform Lagos into a place that's easier and more attractive to the middle and upper classes, they're hurting the very people who the city relies on. Because the people living in communities like Makoko, like Owan Shoki and Elijah Altamara, they're doing the jobs that keep the city moving. They're drivers, cleaners, laborers, electricians, plumbers.

Emmanuel, as a resident of Lagos, a place your family is from. What's it like to be there in this place where there's such a wide wealth gap? I moved to Lagos about 10 years ago, and actually the destruction of informal settlements was one of the first stories I reported on when I got there. I went to a community where about 9,000 people had been displaced. And Aisha, I remember being so shocked and thinking that this was unprecedented, unheard of. then I quickly realized actually that this was normal and in fact this was actually increasing and that many of the middle class developments

being constructed around the city were built on sites where communities with legal protections and historical links had been forced out. Personally, I'm privileged, you know, I live in an affluent part of Lagos called Iquo-Yea. I live in a high-rise in a housing estate with pools, lush greenery. Our estate has 24-hour electricity

24-hour security but the people who are essential to this last reality live very differently many of the cleaners and drivers and workers in my state barely make the minimum wage which is just $60 a month, $2 a day. Many barely earn enough to pay for rent or transport or food in a city where inflation has been

more than 15% for the last five years. Poverty and extreme wealth are deeply linked here like in many cities around the world But the contrast here is so stark and it keeps widening. And at the heart of all of this is this unanswered question. Is there a way to live together so that Lagos can continue to grow without leaving so many people behind? Thank you so much, Emmanuel, for this really important reporting. I really appreciate it.

Thanks for Aisha. Thanks for having me. That's NPR Africa correspondent Emmanuel Akenwatu. This episode of The Sunday Story was produced. by Andrew Mambo. It was edited by Jenny Schmidt. The engineer was Robert Rodriguez. We got production help on this story from Jewel Bright and Andrew Craig. The rest of the Sunday story team includes Justine Yan and Leanna Simstrom. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. I'm Aisha Roscoe, and up first we'll be back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week.

Until then, have a great rest of your weekend.