Since December 2019, Nigerian authorities have destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses in waves of violent mass evictions on the lagoons and islands that dot the waterways of the country’s largest city, leaving thousands of mostly poor people homeless. Many, like Obinna, continue to live in the rubble of their demolished compounds, with nowhere else to go.
The port authority and the navy units that carry out the evictions accuse residents of either stealing oil from the pipelines that run beneath the waterways or turning a blind eye to the theft, thereby depriving the city’s coffers of revenues.
A month after the demolitions began, Lagos’s government announced its intention to build a tourist resort on Tarkwa Bay. Photograph: Emmanuel Akinwotu