By Kachi Okezie, Esq

A Facebook post recently sparked an uncomfortable but necessary debate. The claim was blunt: Nigerians based in the UK are poor! Not broke, not stingy, but poor — especially when compared with Nigerians living in the EU, the United States, Canada, or even Malaysia. Predictably, the comment offended many. But it left me rather bemused. The reason is because beyond the outrage lies a more serious question Nigerians rarely confront honestly: what do we really mean when we talk about poverty?

Because “broke” is temporary. It describes a phase, a setback, a rough patch. Broke assumes recovery. “Stingy” is different — it is deliberate. You have money, but you are selective about how it leaves your hands, who you give it to, and in exchange for what. But “poor” is not merely an economic condition. At its most damaging, poverty is behavioural. It is cultural. It is a mindset or mentality that survives even when income improves.

Years spent living in the UK make this distinction impossible to ignore. The British system is not glamorous, but it is rigid and deeply structured. Time is money in the most literal sense. You are paid for hours worked, and those hours are accounted for. There is no big-man culture to negotiate with, no madam to appease, no shortcut worth the consequences. Accountability is baked in. Planning is normal. Waste is costly.

The social safety net reinforces this discipline. Healthcare, education, and basic public services function well enough to remove constant survival anxiety. Taxes are collected with frightening efficiency — compliance is not optional. In such an environment, dependence loses its moral cover. There is little room for a “dash me” mentality when the system already provides a baseline of dignity for everyone. What remains is choice: how you spend, how you save, how you plan. If you fail to plan you plan to fail. Simple as.

Yet when Nigerians in the UK are compared with Nigerians in the US, Canada, parts of Europe, or Malaysia, an uncomfortable pattern appears. It is not always about earnings. UK-based Nigerians often earn less than those in North America, but so do other migrant communities — and many of those communities still appear more stable, less stressed, more upwardly mobile. But the strong sterling compensates handsomely. The difference is posture. Expectations. Financial habits and attitudes shaped long before migration. Begging normalised.

Nigerians mostly don’t suffer from a lack of ambition or grit. What they’re fast forming is an attitude of entitlement without structure. Hustle is celebrated, but discipline is ridiculed. Suffering is romanticised, yet accountability is resisted or excused. Many people carry extended family obligations they cannot afford, while simultaneously performing wealth they do not possess. Consumption becomes evidence of relevance. Saying no feels like failure.

These attitudes spill loudly into relationships. Nigerian women are generally intelligent, visible, and globally ambitious — as they should be. But ambition becomes distortion when it turns into extraction. Soft life is not the issue; soft accountability is. When marriage is framed as an upgrade plan rather than a partnership, when provision is demanded as proof of love while contribution remains negotiable, the outcomes should not surprise anyone.

It is no accident that many Nigerian men abroad increasingly form relationships with women from Uganda, Kenya, Zimbabwe, and similar contexts — women who often arrive with fewer assumptions and clearer expectations. This is not an insult; it is market feedback. People respond to incentives, not slogans.

The men are not innocent either. Many confuse pressure with masculinity, overextend themselves financially, avoid honest conversations, and then resent the expectations they quietly enabled. Everyone feels cheated. No one feels responsible.

So when someone says Nigerians in the UK appear “poor” compared to their counterparts in the US, Canada, the EU, or Malaysia, it is worth resisting knee-jerk defensiveness. What if the observation is not about salary levels but about culture and value systems? What if it is not income that is missing, but intention? What if money passes through quickly because planning never arrived with it?

Perhaps, this where institutions like the National Orientation Agency should matter — but rarely do. Nigeria’s real orientation problem is not motivation; it is recalibration. Work is treated as punishment, not leverage. Money is treated as validation, not a tool or factor of production. Relationships are treated as transactions, not partnerships.

Being broke is a phase. Being stingy is a choice. But being poor — truly poor — is when mindset quietly sabotages opportunity, again and again, across borders and currencies.

And that kind of poverty travels easily. It needs no visa.

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

By Joe William-Obi

Nigeria is a country with the ambition of a global power and the
electricity output of a small town in rural America. For decades, we
have tolerated a power sector so dysfunctional that it would be
ridiculous if it were not crippling our economy, stalling our
industries, and humiliating our citizens daily. What confronts us
today is not a technical mystery or a shortage of ideas. It is a
political failure. The longer we pretend otherwise, like the
proverbial ostrich with its head buried in the sand, the deeper and
costlier our darkness becomes.

Let us begin with the facts, because the facts are not in dispute.
Nigeria generates between 4,000 and 6,000 megawatts (MW) of
electricity for a population exceeding 200 million people. Our
installed capacity stands at roughly 13,000 MW, yet less than 5,000 MW
is typically available on the national grid. Installed capacity is
often misunderstood, so an analogy helps. It is like the top speed
printed on a car’s speedometer. Your car may be rated for 220 km/h,
but traffic, bad roads, fuel constraints, and weather conditions, let
alone your love for life and fear of being involved in an accident,
mean you almost never reach that speed.

Power plants work the same way. Installed capacity represents a
theoretical maximum. Actual generation is what truly reaches homes,
hospitals, and factories. In Nigeria’s case, that real-world output
remains painfully low, year after year.

Meanwhile, the Minister of Power states that Nigeria requires about
$3.5 billion annually to reach 40,000 MW by 2030. Aliko Dangote has
argued that Nigeria should already be producing 60,000 MW. Former
Power minister, Professor Barth Nnaji, maintains that at least 100,000
MW is necessary to meet the demands of our population and industrial
ambitions. These numbers are not controversial within energy policy
circles. What is controversial, indeed indefensible, is our continued
refusal to act decisively on them.

The consequences of inaction are visible and immediate. In January
2026 alone, the national grid collapsed twice, plunging millions of
Nigerians into darkness. These events were not freak accidents or acts
of God. They were the predictable outcomes of a system that has been
neglected, mismanaged, and shielded from accountability by inertia and
vested interests.

Mismanagement in Nigeria’s power sector is not merely accidental
incompetence; in many cases, it is deliberate. Although Generation
Companies (GENCOs) and Distribution Companies (DISCOs) are nominally
privately owned, they operate within a framework heavily sustained by
government guarantees, subsidies, and repeated bailouts. When things
go wrong, and they often do, it is public money that is deployed to
keep the system afloat.

This milieu warehouses rent seeking, and that is when people use
political influence or connections to make money from a system without
creating real value, often by manipulating rules, contracts, or
government decisions. Politically connected consultants, contractors,
and middlemen are inserted into power sector projects not to improve
performance, but to fleece public funds. Inflated consultancy fees are
quietly embedded into project costs. Delays are tolerated because they
justify fresh interventions. So-called emergency contracts are renewed
year after year without addressing the underlying problems they were
meant to solve.

GENCOs and DISCOs are often unable to exit these arrangements even
when they are inefficient or exploitative. Many are locked into
government-backed contracts, regulatory approvals, or intervention
funding structures. When projects fail or costs spiral, the losses do
not remain with the companies alone. They are transferred to the
public through tariff hikes, bailout packages, and special
intervention funds. In this distorted system, failure is not punished;
it is rewarded. The worse the system performs, the more money flows
into it under the banner of rescue.

Darkness, in other words, becomes profitable for a few unscrupulous
citizens. When breakdowns generate income, the incentive to fix the
power sector disappears.

The economic cost of this dysfunction is jarring. According to the
Rural Electrification Agency, Nigeria loses approximately $25 billion
annually to unreliable electricity and deteriorating infrastructure.
That is money that could be building schools, hospitals, roads, and
paying salaries. Instead, it is consumed by diesel generators, wasted
fuel, and lost productivity.

In places like Asaba, this failure is not abstract or statistical. It
is not beyond the pale that emergency surgeries at the Federal Medical
Center are sometimes performed under phone lights when electricity
suddenly fails, or elective procedures are cancelled outright. In Aba,
thank goodness for Governor Alex Otti, else tailors would be spending
more on fuel than on fabric. In Kano, a few textile factories that
once employed thousands now operate at a fraction of their former
capacities; a larger number are already dead. Even multinational
corporations are relocating operations to Ghana and Kenya, where
electricity supply is far more reliable.

To understand how the system breaks down, one must follow both the
money and the mechanics. Electricity does not appear by magic. Most of
Nigeria’s power plants run on gas. That gas fuels the turbines, that
is, the massive machines that generate electricity. When GENCOs are
not paid, they cannot afford gas purchases or routine turbine
maintenance. Plants are then forced to shut down or operate far below
capacity, even when the physical infrastructure exists.

On the other end of the chain, DISCOs are responsible for delivering
electricity to homes and businesses. When they fail to maintain power
lines, transformers, and substations, electricity leaks out of the
system through faults and breakdowns. When they fail to collect
revenue efficiently, they lack the funds to repair damaged equipment
or expand capacity. The result is widespread blackouts, not because
power does not exist, but because the system designed to deliver it is
broken.

Simply put, when money stops flowing through the system, electricity
stops flowing too.

Sitting between GENCOs and DISCOs is the Nigerian Bulk Electricity
Trading Company (NBET), a government-created intermediary intended to
stabilize payments after privatization. The logic was straightforward.
Many DISCOs were financially weak and unable to pay GENCOs reliably.
NBET was therefore established to buy electricity from GENCOs,
guarantee payment using government backing, and resell that power to
DISCOs.

In theory, this process was meant to reassure power producers,
encourage investment, and prevent system collapse. In practice, it has
achieved the opposite. Because NBET depends on government funding and
political approvals, payments are often delayed. GENCOs wait months to
receive money for electricity already produced, leaving them unable to
buy gas or maintain equipment. Meanwhile, DISCOs face little pressure
to improve efficiency or revenue collection because the government
absorbs the risk.

What was designed as a temporary stabilizer has become a permanent
bottleneck, slowing payments, weakening accountability, and trapping
the sector into a cycle of debt and underperformance. Worse still,
NBET blocks direct transactions between GENCOs and DISCOs that could
enable faster and more efficient settlements.

This is why bilateral trading matters. It simply means allowing GENCOs
and DISCOs to negotiate directly, without a government warehouse like
NBET in the middle. Think of a farmer selling yams directly to a
market trader instead of through a government depot that pays late and
fixes prices without understanding production costs. NBET should be
scrapped to allow bilateral trading between GENCOs and DISCOs.

We do not need to look for working models. The state of Texas, USA,
provides a clear example. The simplest way to understand its power
system is to compare it to food distribution. Power generators are
like farmers. Their job is to produce electricity and bring it to
market. There is no single government warehouse hoarding supply.
Instead, electricity is sold in a competitive wholesale market managed
by ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas), where prices reflect
real-time demand rather than bureaucratic fiat.

Retail Electricity Providers then buy power from this market and
compete to sell it to consumers. If a Retail Electricity Provider
overcharges or delivers poor service, customers switch, no long
stories. Period! Transmission and Distribution Utilities function as
transporters, delivering power and fixing faults without owning
electricity or setting prices. Roles are clear: generators produce,
retail providers sell, transporters deliver. Money flows directly,
underperformers are forced out, and reliability follows.

China offers complementary lessons in cost-effective scaling.
Large-scale hydroelectric power provided China with a low-cost
backbone of electricity for decades. Coal plants, though
controversial, were standardized and mass-produced, reducing unit
costs and accelerating deployment. More recently, China has scaled
solar and wind aggressively, not as standalone solutions, but as part
of a diversified mix supported by strong transmission infrastructure
and grid-level storage. The lesson is not ideology; it is sequencing.
China built cheap, reliable base power first, then layered renewables
on top.

The City of Shanghai offers another lesson, this time in daily system
management. Sensors monitor electricity use, weather, and equipment
performance. Artificial intelligence analyzes this data in real time,
adjusting supply, prioritizing renewables, and detecting faults early.
Waste is minimized, outages are rare, and efficiency is maximized.
These are not futuristic ideas. They are working systems.

Nigeria must also decentralize power. Running an entire nation on a
single grid is like supplying water through one pipe. States,
communities, and private firms should be free to build mini-grids and
local systems that are faster to deploy and easier to maintain.

All these changes need skilled personnel to work. Nigeria needs a
national push to train electricians, line workers, solar technicians,
and grid engineers. The National Power Training Institute of Nigeria
(NAPTIN) is doing important work, but it is not enough. Every state
must expand technical and vocational training focused on electricity.

Pricing must also be confronted honestly. Power sold below cost is
unsustainable. Cost-reflective tariffs, paired with targeted subsidies
for citizens, are unavoidable. A cost-reflective tariff simply means
electricity is priced high enough to cover what it costs to produce,
transmit, and deliver power so the system can run without constant
bailouts or collapse. Failure must stop being rewarded. Contractors
who miss deadlines should face penalties. If you cannot deliver, you
should not be paid.

Finally, corruption must be confronted head-on. Contracts must be
published. Bidding must be transparent. Regulators must be insulated
from political pressure. Courts must act swiftly and enforce
judgments.

We have lived with blackouts for so long that many Nigerians have
stopped believing reliable electricity is possible. This fatalism is
dangerous, because a nation that is resigned to the belief that it
cannot power its homes, cannot power its industries. I must also
submit that that same nation that cannot power its industries, cannot
power its future.

Of course, we know the solutions to fixing our electricity malaise.
What we need now is leadership, leadership that puts people before
politics, performance before patronage, and light before darkness.
Nigeria’s darkness did not happen by accident. It was chosen,
maintained, and normalized. But what is chosen can also be rejected.
The question before us is no longer whether we know the solutions to
our self-inflicted catastrophe, because we do. The question should be
whether we have the courage to act on them now.

Joe William-Obi, Texas, USA. Joe William-Obi is a graduate of
history from the University of Ife, Ile-Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo
University), a Certified Public Accountant, and a Nurse Practitioner
in the United States. He writes from the United States, where he has
lived since leaving Nigeria in the 1980s.

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

By Tony Eluemunor

Sadly, Ambassador-designate Mr. Reno Omokri has refused to find a
modicum of dignity from somewhere, anywhere, with which to cover
himself. I don’t quarrel with his avowed duty of defending Mr.
President from any and every attack, real or imaginary, though
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has designated spokesmen aplenty. That is
a personal choice and any man can be a fool, those who will be will
still be despite the non-foolish capabilities and intelligence the
almighty God endowed them with.

Yet, the gutter he threw himself into when he equated the recent power
outage affecting some states in the United States of America with
Nigeria’s scandalous electricity supply is worrisome. Nigeria’s
shameful electricity generation and distribution low indices did not
begin with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration. It might not
even have become worse under Tinubu. That problem has bedeviled
Nigeria since the 1980s when heavy industries began to die because
they lacked adequate power supply. That was why the Dunlop tyre
company relocated from Nigeria to Ghana in the 1980s/90s. That was why
the heavy textile mills across Nigeria almost died out entirely.

Omokri advertised his senselessness or insensitivity in that post
where he thought he was attacking Mr. Peter Obi and this
Ambassador-designate thus served notice that he will be a useless
Ambassador. That brings us back to the question of why and how
President Tinubu nominated him, when it has been most obvious that the
poor man actually wants to remain a social media warrior. Which
characteristics threw him up? What in him showed that he had the
promise of representing Nigeria’s interests well in a foreign country?
The doubts resonate further when it is remembered that what drew the
attention of the Tinubu administration to him, as Mr. Omoyele Sowore
recently recounted in court, is nothing more dignified than that he
had accused Tinubu of narcotics-related crimes.

Before we interrogate Mr. Omokri’s claims about power outage in the US
which he favourably compared to Nigeria’s, may we please check the
effect of low electricity supply in Nigeria. Several heavy industries
and multinational corporations have either completely exited Nigeria,
shut down manufacturing plants, or scaled back operations, not since
the years of yore but between 2020 and 2025, with high energy costs,
unreliable power, and foreign exchange volatility cited as primary
drivers, according to internet sources. Please, remember that the
first APC administration, headed by President Mohammadu Buhari, began
in May 2015 and started its second tenure in 2019.

In 2023–2025, over 60% of manufacturing firms were forced to abandon
the national grid for self-generation due to poor, unreliable service.
The effect of such is that the price of their products or services
would have increased, causing a hike in the inflation rate, reducing
the peoples’ purchasing power and their quality of life.

The heavy industries and major firms that have departed or scaled
down, heavily impacted by the energy crisis as tossed up by the
internet checks include: Procter & Gamble (P&G): Ceased manufacturing
operations in Nigeria in December 2023, shifting to an import-only
model, partly due to the difficulty of operating in a challenging
business climate with high energy costs. Effect; the Nigerians that
had been employed in its manufacturing facilities lost their jobs and
the economy lost their taxes. And those unfortunates had no safety net
to break their falls. They and the members of their families were left
all alone to suffer their sad fates.

GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Nigeria PLC (GSK): Announced plans to exit
Nigeria in 2023 after 51 years, ceasing manufacturing in 2021 and
moving to a third-party distribution model.

Unilever Nigeria PLC: Stopped the production of its home care and
skin-cleansing products in 2023 to reduce exposure to foreign exchange
and energy challenges.

Diageo PLC: Sold its majority stake in Guinness Nigeria PLC in 2024,
shifting from direct management.

Kimberly-Clark Nigeria: Closed its production plant in 2024 due to
economic challenges.

PZ Cussons Nigeria PLC: Experienced significant disruptions and began
restructuring, citing economic volatility.

Microsoft Nigeria: Impacted by layoffs in 2024, closing its African
Development Centre as it realigned its local operations.

Tower Aluminium Nigeria PLC: Shut down operations in 2020 after
decades in the country.

Manufacturing & Other Firms that Closed/Left: Framan Industries Ltd,
Stone Industries Ltd, Mufex Nigeria Company Ltd, and Surest Foam Ltd:
These firms shut down operations in 2021. Universal Rubber Company
Ltd, Mother’s Pride Ventures Ltd, Errand Products Nigeria Ltd, and
Gorgeous Metal Makers Ltd: These brands ceased operations in 2022.
Deli Foods Nigeria Ltd and Standard Biscuits Nigeria Ltd: Closed
around 2020–2021. Equinor Nigeria Energy Company: Sold its 54% stake
in Nigerian oil assets to Chappal Energies in 2024, exiting after 30
years.

Now, who has kept tab of the number of jobs Nigerians lost when those
outfits shut down? Who has tracked the quality of life among the
former employees of those companies?

The Key Factors Driving the Exodus:

Low Electricity and High Energy Costs: Manufacturers are spending
billions on diesel generators to keep machines running, making
production costs uncompetitive.

Grid Collapses: The national grid recorded over 12 collapses in 2024
and several in early 2025/2026, forcing a shift to “captive”
(self-generated) power, with over 60% of companies now off-grid.

Foreign Exchange Volatility: The devaluation of the naira has made
importing raw materials and machinery for heavy manufacturing
unsustainable. That does not mean that the companies that have not
shut down production in Nigeria are having it good. For instance, in
2025 alone, over 20 additional firms (including large manufacturing
entities) were reported to have received licenses for independent,
captive power generation, indicating a mass movement away from the
national grid. The direct result of this is that such firms have left
their core businesses to begin to hunt for electricity
self-sufficiency simply because Nigeria has failed to provide the
needed electricity for them.

It is in that milieu that Omokri made his unfortunate post that power
outage is not such a sign of national failure because it happened
recently in the US. So, it is a disaster foretold when a person of Mr.
Omokri’s standing begins to commit fallacies of the most basic kind,
shamelessly. He is an Ambassador designate, for crying out loud.

So, does it mean that if President Tinubu asked his
Ambassador-designate if there was any need to upgrade Nigeria’s
electricity generation, transmission and distribution system to match
USA’s, that Omokri would tell him that there was no difference between
them? And that his answer would remain so even if an earthquake had
caused the USA outage?

Please, read Mr. Reno Omokri’s self-mockery; “The United States has
suffered several major power grid failures, resulting in widespread
outages, including a blackout that left 55 million people without
electricity. As you read this, the United States is experiencing
blackouts across multiple states as its power grid nears collapse.

These things happen in every country on Earth. It is not limited to
Nigeria, and it is a pity that Peter Obi, who last year lied that
Tanzania had solved its power problem and asked Nigeria to learn from
that nation, is up to his old tricks by de-marketing Nigeria over the
recent power grid collapse”.

I don’t know exactly what Mr. Peter Obi said about Tanzania, but I am
not about to take whatever Mr. Omokri attributed to Obi as anything
near the truth because of his antecedents. He once made sundry
accusations about President Tinubu, calling him all sorts of names
except a child of God, only to recant. But then, if for his efforts he
emerged an Ambassador-designate, why would he stop lying when lying
could be a highly remunerated “job” in Nigeria? For instance, I keyed
in “Peter Obi on Tanzania’s electricity supply” and guess what popped
out? “In April 2024, Peter Obi lauded Tanzania for its improved
electricity supply, noting its ability to power major cities and
achieve high, stable access. He highlighted the country’s reported,
though debated, surplus power generation, urging Nigeria to emulate
such progress.

Key details of his statements regarding Tanzania include:

Observations: Obi claimed Tanzania achieved such high energy output
that it was able to temporarily shut down some hydroelectric stations
due to excess in the national grid, as seen in (an) Arise News report.

Comparison: He expressed frustration that Nigeria, “the giant of
Africa,” cannot adequately power its cities while Tanzania, has made,
according to his X post, significant progress in its power sector.
Call to Action: Obi urged the Nigerian government to learn from
Tanzania’s approach to enhance electricity accessibility and
stability….” So, did Omokri lie against Obi? You and God be the judge!

Tanzania produces about 3, 000 to 4,000 megawatts of electricity for
her 70.1 million people. Omokri gloried in this claim: “Under Tinubu,
Nigeria broke its power generation record with a peak generation of
5,801.84MW and maximum daily energy output of 128,370.75
megawatt-hours (MWh), the highest ever attained in the history of the
electricity industry in Nigeria”. But with Nigeria’s population of
approximately 237.5 million people, Nigeria actually has a lot to
learn from Tanzania. Ever worrisome is the reliability of power supply
in Nigeria because the national grid is prone to frequent failures,
with over 140 instances of collapse recorded in recent years. Recent
major collapses occurred in October 2024, November 2024, December
2025, and over two times in January 2026.

Now back to Omokri’s insinuations about electricity supply in the USA;
the US occupies the second position in the world in electricity
supply, after China (please remember the populations of the two
countries. Now tried as I did, I couldn’t find the percentage of homes
that do not have electricity in the US. It was like I was asking a
stupid question. I stopped that stupid quest when this popped up: “Can
you legally live off the grid in the US?”. What a question? And the
answer: “Yes — you can legally live off the grid in the United States,
but success depends on compliance with local zoning, building codes,
water and waste regulations, and power system requirements.” Where I
come from, there are no building codes, no water and waste
regulations, no power system requirements and whole towns and villages
live off the national grid not out of choice but because the country
has failed to extend that amenity to them. Actually it appears that in
Nigeria, the reason why governments exist has not been found…and that
is why Tinubu’s administration has spent two years in office without
appointing Ambassadors.

And to tell us that Ambassadors may not be important, he appointed
Reno Mocking Omokri as an Ambassador-designate. This motor-mouth
self-mockery mocker Omokri may even advise Tinubu that the New York
World Trade Centre’s collapse in the terrorist attack of 9/11 was
proof positive that building collapse abounds in New York City just as
in Lagos. He could fire off a memo in a diplomatic pouch that an
earthquake in USA that tore up a road shows that leprous roads are not
Nigeria’s preserve. Otherwise, how a non-diseased mind could have
dreamt up the asinine illogicality that a storm-related power failure
anywhere equals the inexcusable incessant power failure that shames
Nigeria, including the Presidential office, daily, is a cause for
worry. But then, such a person with such a mind has become Nigeria’s
Ambassador-designate. This is one great “feat” Tinubu will be
remembered for – even as the world laughs at us.

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

For more than a century, Makoko—often described as the largest floating slum in Nigeria, home to an estimated 200,000 people was a living testament to resilience. Built on stilts above the Lagos Lagoon, with fishing as its economic heartbeat and canoes as its streets, the community fashioned purposeful life from a place others derided as marginal. Here were homes, social networks, markets, schools and churches, structures and systems that sustained families across generations. But in late December and through January, bulldozers and amphibious excavators escorted by soldiers and armed police razed vast swathes of the settlement, destroying at least 3,000 homes and displacing more than 10,000 people within a matter of days.

What happened in Makoko was not simply urban planning; it was state driven urban violence and dispossession of those at the bottom of the economic pyramid carried out without meaningful notice, proper consultation, or plans for relocation and rehabilitation. This is, tragically, part of a pattern in Lagos and other Nigerian cities where the poor are treated as obstacles to “development,” rather than citizens with rights to dignity, shelter, and livelihood.

A Pattern of Displacement, Not Development

Lagos is a megacity, overcrowded, underplanned, choking with traffic and burdened by a severe shortage of affordable housing. The demand for land and waterfront access is intense, and the result has consistently been that those without economic power pay the price.

In 2016–2017, tens of thousands of residents of Otodo Gbame, another waterfront settlement, were forcibly evicted with minimal warning and no relocation plan. The eviction was so egregious that the Lagos High Court later described it as cruel, inhuman, degrading, and a violation of constitutional rights. Those left homeless were never resettled even years later and the lands they once occupied became sites for private development.

This experience has echoed through other communities. Since 2020, waterfront settlements including Oworonshoki, Oko Baba, Ayetoro, Ilaje Otumara, Owode Onirin, Baba Ijora, and Orisunmibare have endured waves of demolition and eviction, often in defiance of court orders and without compensation. These actions have uprooted families, erased businesses, undermined children’s education and forced countless citizens into precarious living conditions.

Makoko’s recent demolition, under the guise of safety and sanitation, was justified by authorities as necessary to remove structures too close to high tension power lines and to reduce hazards. The Lagos State Government claims that the action was part of a broader safety and environmental policy. But residents and civil society groups counter that the demolitions far exceeded the asserted safety parameters, extending well beyond legally prescribed setback distances, and were carried out with significant force and little regard for due process.

The scale of human suffering cannot be overstated. In Makoko, families pulled roofing sheets and planks apart in desperation, attempting to salvage what they could before bulldozers arrived. In some cases, authorities reportedly used tear gas against residents, injuring women, elderly persons and children. In the chaos that ensued, there are reports of several deaths, including elderly residents and newborns.

More than homes were lost, livelihoods, community systems, and social infrastructures including schools, clinics, places of worship, and markets were obliterated. Thousands now sleep on boats, in dilapidated shelters, or in open spaces, exposed to the elements and worsening insecurity.

For a community that survives through fishing, canoe transport, small commerce and social networks woven tightly over generations, the loss is existential. There is no comprehensive plan to relocate families, no promise of affordable housing and no social infrastructure to preserve education and healthcare. Instead of a considered, humane transition, residents have been left to fend for themselves, their futures uncertain.

Who Benefits from “Urban Renewal”?

One of the bitter ironies of Nigeria’s urban planning history is that many eviction campaigns are justified in the name of beautification, safety, or development, yet the outcomes overwhelmingly benefit elites and private investors, not the displaced poor. Prominent waterfront and inner city lands have been turned into luxury estates, high end commercial spaces and gated communities where everyday Nigerians cannot afford to live.

In Otodo Gbame, land once occupied by working class families is now prime real estate. The slums have been cleared, but the people have not been rehoused nor adequately compensated. They linger on the margins, often in worse conditions than before the evictions, with limited access to work or stable housing.

In private conversations and public commentary, many Nigerians suspect similar motives around the Makoko demolition, land reclamation to make way for future high end development, tourism frontage or speculative real estate value rather than genuine, inclusive urban improvement. While this remains a matter of contention, it underscores why trust between communities and government has eroded.

The Right to the City: A Matter of Justice

At the heart of these mass demolitions is a fundamental issue of social justice: who has a right to the city?

Every person who lives in Nigeria’s cities, whether in upscale Lekki or informal Makoko, is a citizen with constitutional rights. The right to housing, security of tenure, livelihood and dignity are enshrined in our laws and in international human rights standards to which Nigeria is a signatory. Forced evictions without consultation, compensation or resettlement plans violate these standards, and they exacerbate poverty rather than alleviate it.

To be clear: slums and informal settlements do pose challenges. They often lack basic infrastructure like piped water, sanitation, electricity, adequate roads and can indeed present risks. But the solution cannot be demolition without planning, without compassion, without relocation or support. Urban policy that ignores these elements is not urban renewal: it is urban violence.

Towards Inclusive, Rights Based Urban Policies

Nigeria’s housing deficit is vast and growing. Estimates suggest that the country needs hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of new affordable housing units each year to keep pace with urbanisation. The absence of proactive, scalable housing solutions means that slums will continue to grow, not because people prefer them, but because people have no alternatives.

Genuine development would focus on affordable housing construction tied to relocation plans before demolition begins; participatory urban planning, involving community members in decisions that affect their homes and livelihoods; legal protections for informal settlements, with incremental formalisation where appropriate rather than forced expulsion; social infrastructure investments in schools, clinics, clean water and sanitation that uplift communities rather than uproot them.

Such policies require political will and investment. They also require a shift away from development paradigms that equate modern cities with luxury towers and gated enclaves, and towards models that are inclusive, equitable and reflective of Nigeria’s diverse urban population.

The destruction of Makoko should be a moment of national reflection not only on the immediacy of the tragedy, but on the broader trajectory of our urban policies. When the voices of the poor are drowned out by the roar of excavators and the lure of lucrative land deals, we risk not just the displacement of people but the loss of humanity in governance.

African cities like Lagos can be vibrant, equitable and prosperous, but only if the rights of all residents are recognised and protected. Progress that excludes and marginalises the poor is not progress at all; it is a reiteration of inequality and injustice in concrete and steel.

The residents of Makoko deserve more than debris on the lagoon and uncertainty for the future. They deserve homes, livelihood support, and a place in the city they helped build because society cannot build for the wealthy and powerful alone.

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.