Forced eviction: Groups condemn demolition of Lagos waterfront community
By: Abudu Olalekan
Forced eviction in Lagos stopped being just another grim headline the morning Precious Seed community woke up to bulldozers at their gate. Dawn had barely broken on Thursday, November 27, 2025, when residents of the small waterfront settlement, also called Ferry, saw Lagos State Task Force trucks lined up like they owned the place. Behind them, an excavator from the Lagos State Emergency Management Agency (LASEMA) waited, engine humming, like it already knew how the day would end.
People ran to call their leaders. Others grabbed phones, children, documents. Community representatives, joined by lawyers from Justice & Empowerment Initiatives (JEI), rushed to the entrance. They didn’t come empty-handed. They came with copies of a court order. An injunction from the Lagos State High Court that, they say, clearly protects Precious Seed and other waterfront communities from eviction or demolition without proper consultation and resettlement.
The orders had been pasted boldly on the community gate. On walls. On doors. Old cement, new ink. Still, when the leaders showed the Task Force officers the documents, the answer came quick. The officers said they were acting on instructions from the Lagos State Government. The Commissioner of Police, they added, already knew. And then the words that chilled everyone: the demolition would go on anyway.
As residents and lawyers tried to plead, to at least make some quick calls, the situation turn rough. According to a joint statement by five civil society groups, Task Force officers fired teargas at the entrance, scattering people who only wanted to talk, not fight. Women coughed. Children cried. Even the lawyers, they say, were not spared.
The groups insist no building in Precious Seed had been marked for demolition before that day. No official notice. No statutory paper. Nothing written, nothing served. Just a brief visit from Task Force officers the previous day, warning vaguely that demolition would soon start. A teacher at a small NGO-run school by the gate, where more than 120 pupils were in the middle of their common entrance exams, reportedly begged the officers to delay. Exams first, destruction later, at least. Her plea went nowhere.
In the statement, JEI, the Nigerian Slum/Informal Settlement Federation, Lagos Urban Development Initiative (LUDI), Global Rights and CEE-HOPE described what followed. At about 8:20 a.m., they say, the LASEMA excavator moved in, flanked by officials in LASEMA uniforms, around two dozen heavily armed Task Force men, and a crowd of agberos – the so‑called “area boys” – carrying machetes and sticks. Houses started falling. Not just shacks. Multi-storey block buildings with proper tiles on floors and walls. Several churches too.
One widow, who had buried her husband barely four months earlier, stayed sitting on the upstairs balcony of her two-storey church and home, they recount. She refused to come down. Told the officers they would have to demolish the building with her inside, so she could go and meet her husband. Another widow, whose late husband had been the CDA chairman, was dragged away in tears by her own daughter as the excavator moved toward the only property he left behind. Scenes like that. Over and over.
Just the year before, in April 2024, the community had done a house‑numbering exercise with help from the Nigerian Slum/Informal Settlement Federation. They counted 292 buildings. 996 households. 299 businesses. More than 3,022 residents trying to live a normal life. Now, many of those same families are sleeping on rubble. Guarding what little they saved from looters. No roof, just open sky and mosquitos.
When the machines finished at Precious Seed, they reportedly rolled down to nearby Lagos Street in Oworonshoki, bringing down more homes and still threatening to hit Mosafejo Oworonshoki next. Residents say hundreds are now scattered all over the area, squatting in corners, splitting families, just trying to survive tonight before thinking of tomorrow.
The statement from the groups calls the operation “as heartless as any” – coming just before December, in a brutal economic downturn. No prior planning for where people would go. When homes vanish like this, they say, it can take weeks, months, even years to find anything stable again. Landlords become tenants or just squat. Small business owners end up hawking on the road. Children drop out of school. Whole families break apart. Mental and physical health quietly falls apart too.
For them, this isn’t an isolated story. They link it to a disturbing pattern of forced evictions across Oworonshoki and Lagos since 2023: from waterfront communities earlier listed in the Kosofe Model City Plan, to Orisunmibare in Apapa, Otto communities, Oko Baba, parts of Aiyetoro, Ilaje Otumara, Baba Ijora, and fresh demolitions in Ebute Kekere, Berger axis of Oworonshoki, and Lone Street in Mosafejo/Idi Araba. Behind it, they warn, is an alliance of powerful land-owning families and private developers, using state power and ignoring court orders.
The groups, along with residents of informal settlements across Lagos, are demanding an immediate stop to the demolition of Precious Seed, rebuilding of the destroyed homes, and real respect for the law. Their message, carried by Reportersroom, is blunt: mass forced eviction of more than 3,000 people without notice, consultation or resettlement is not just illegal. It’s dangerous.
