VIA FIJ:
Once it’s dark and the excavators stop grinding in Oworonshoki, Kosofe Local Government Area of Lagos State, residents bring out their mats to sleep amid the rubble, the only home they now have.
When FIJ visited the town on Tuesday to speak with residents, they said that they have now found new homes among the wreckage, as there is nowhere else to go.
Idowu, a mother of three who now hawks during the day, said that her new home is a small bench placed in the middle of the wreckage where her house used to sit.
Before her house was demolished in November, Idowu used to fish Tilapia, Catfish and many more in the lagoon, but now, she competes to sell chilled water during the day when the demolishers are around.
And when she is done, she retires to a small wooden bench, where she swats mosquitoes and battles cold until dawn.
“I have been sleeping out here in the open with others who don’t have a place to go for nearly one month,” she told FIJ in Yoruba.
Before FIJ met her on Tuesday evening, she used to sleep in the open with them. “I just took my children somewhere in Mowe, where my husband recently got an apartment.”
She said that they currently stay in the new apartment alone, and she diligently hawks to get money to send to them. But this is not all of Idowu’s fears.
The now-displaced resident told FIJ that she knows that it is a matter of time before they are even barred from sleeping in the ruins, and that would not only cripple her. It would also render her jobless.
“Once this year is over and they complete the round of demolitions, I will not have anything else to do to make a living. I have been worried about it because we are aware we will be forced to evacuate out of this place soon,” she said as she continuously drove mosquitoes off her feet.