By Sunny Igboanugo
The squad was said to have arrived in the wee-hours of Saturday, December 30 and worked till Sunday morning. By the time the bulldozers they brought along with them pulled out in the afternoon of the same day, the Police Officers Wives Association (POWA) plaza at the Computer Village in Lagos, had become mere rubbles. Mission accomplished.
Soon, the videos started flying around, showing shop owners rummaging through the ruins to see what they could pick up. But nothing of any value could be found. In fact, in one of the videos, one voice, which described the onslaught as “politics” was heard saying that those who carried out the demolition took time to break into the shops to cart away the valuables.
It would take an imbecile, someone without any sense of value or monks in the monastery without any interest in worldly affairs to ignore the content of those shops – hi-tech equipment, latest i-phones, laptops, air conditioning systems, inverters, solar panels, anti-burglary systems and all – reportedly carted away before the bulldozers moved in. At least, that was the claim from some of the traders.
Were this claim true, that would, for me, be the better, commendable part of the story, because it would mean that at least, a new set of millionaires would emerge, because it would also mean that those who removed them could re-sell them to new buyers, even at half the prices or even as giveaways and thus be put to use rather than crushing them totally.
Yes! Picture it! Contemplate in your mind a situation where those costly goods went down in the rubbles, what could have been lost. Assuming for instance that those items were not removed before the demolition, what quantum of damage in terms of cost? Do you know the cost of one i-phone for instance?
Last week, I was in one of such shops at Shoprite in Lagos and saw that the I-pad we used to buy for about N300,000 is now N1.5million. Assume that in one shop alone, you had five copies of N1.5milllion worth of i-phones. Multiply that by the over 1,000 shops that were reportedly destroyed. How much does it come to?
Yet, these are shops that did not have just five copies, but cartons of these items. Imagine the cost of inverter batteries alone or solar panels – cartons of them – what do they amount to in terms of cost? Would you be talking about millions, billions or trillions of Naira? What is the total amount of Lagos State budget for 2024? Picture it, my dear compatriots. You see why it would be a patriotic duty to steal rather than destroy them? But that’s just a part of the story.
Again, picture another aspect – the timing. Ostensibly, they were quite deliberate about it. They chose very well. They waited until most of the shop owners were probably out of reach. Most of them had actually travelled for Christmas before they struck. That was when they delivered their 24-hour notice. How ingenious? For people who are as far from Lagos as Izzi in Ebonyi State or Ikom in Cross River or Kaura Namode in Zamfara?
Now, the Lagos State Government, has washed its hands and feet of the matter, like Pontus Pilate did in the case of Jesus Christ. Hear Gbenga Omotoso, Commissioner for Information, on the matter: “Those circulating the fake news are opportunistic ethnic chauvinists who will always relish in vacuous propaganda that can fuel their fiendish mission; they will always fail in dividing Lagosians.” Really?
Okay, accepted that this is so, the next question is which government in the whole world would watch such a monumental destruction of goods belonging to citizens they profess to love and wish not to be divided? In which other country of the world outside Ukraine, Palestine or Yemen – countries officially at war or failed states like Somalia, would such monumental waste be permitted?
If indeed the government was not involved, what were they supposed to do? Again, how much is the total budget of the state that it would permit such destruction of an economic beehive with capacity of contributing a handsome quantum of revenue as could be generated from that plaza either directly from tax by their owners or vicariously through the multiplier effects from those doing business with them including millions they employ directly and indirectly?
Is the government saying that POWA could have carried out such monumental destruction if the government did not permit it or truly cared about those traders or the owners of the goods? Certainly no! A caring, responsible government, would have moved in to see how to salvage the situation.
Hear the reason for the demolition from the police authorities: “It has become imperative to properly establish that the complex, a property of the Nigeria Police Officer’s Wives Association, which is officially allocated to wives of Police Officers and their relatives, has been scheduled for demolition to enable the Force commence immediate construction of a modern shopping complex on the same land.
“The decision to demolish and reconstruct is predicated on the fact that professional opinion indicate that the structure as it is constitutes a looming environmental hazard, as the site is prone to flood, and may be susceptible to sudden collapse, hence the need for immediate landscaping and reconstruction. The planned demolition and reconstruction will be in phases and is in good faith for the betterment of all concerned, Olumuyiwa Adejobi, spokesman of the Nigerian Police Force (NPF), had offered in a statement on Saturday, hours before the bulldozers moved in.
Imagine! First, it was to make way for the police authorities to construct “a modern shopping complex” and because it “constitutes a looming environmental hazard, as the site is prone to flood, and may be susceptible to sudden collapse, hence the need for immediate landscaping and reconstruction.”
Does it not sound laughable? What it means is that the plaza was put up in the first place, either without due diligence, integrity test or Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), that it now requires to go down at such a huge cost. What a story! Pray! What is a responsible and responsive government, intent on protecting its people supposed to do in a situation like this?
Okay, since the fear is flooding, is it not apposite to expect that the worst fears are over for now that we’re in the dry season and that the government, could at least have negotiated that for time enough for the shop owners to return from holidays before the demolition is carried out or does flood happen in December in Nigeria? But no story is too funny to hear in Nigeria. No tale is too obtuse or infantile to tell.
Of course, it is people that have this sort of expectation or ask questions like these that Omotoso, my fellow graduate at Rutam House, The Guardian, where the inscription – Conscience Nurtured by Truth, is the first thing that confronts you right at the gate, wantonly and gratuitously describe as ethnic chauvinists. How sad! How truly sad indeed!
Clearly, Omotoso needs not speak in euphemism. Even children still suckling their mother’s breasts knows that he’s referring to Ndigbo. They are the ones mostly affected. More than 80 per cent of those shops belong to them. After all how and when did such demolition become such a fad in the state? Was it not after the same people were threatened with fire and brimstone for daring to vote their choice in the 2023 general elections?
Assuming that they had no hand in the last offensive, who taught the police that it was possible to unleash such monumental offensive against individual and collective wealth on a people if not the selfsame government in Lagos that supervised the onslaught at Alaba International Market shortly after the election?
Without Alaba, where goods and structures worth billions were destroyed, there wouldn’t have been Abule-Ado with a similar experience before Computer Village. Naturally, there is no telling that this would be the last. More buildings will definitely go down as Ndigbo reel through their current harrowing experience in not only in the hands of Lagos government, but the nation at large.
But each time I reflect on the situation and contemplate the mindset of those behind these actions and the reasons driving them, especially those boasting and gloating about it, I never fail to shake my head about the futility of the eventual outcome.
How much can you really do to destroy a man whom God has not destroyed? How far can you really go? Despite the 20 pounds handed over to them immediately after the war, could anyone say that Ndigbo are worse off than other Nigerians who had everything at their beck and call at that time? Who really are the new owners of properties in Port Harcourt and Rivers State, where their homes were seized from them? How those who engage in this offensive against Ndigbo could not read that it is a wasted effort beats me.
Indeed what is the crime they have committed in Lagos outside exhibiting their nature of free spirit to decide on their own? Do their current traducers believe that an Igbo man could really be whipped into line in the manner they’re pursuing the project, when three years of hailstones blitzkrieg and bombardment that led to the killing of more than two million of their brothers and sisters failed to achieve that?
If only they knew? Do the people pushing this arduous project to intimidate Ndigbo in Lagos not know that a father cannot force his son to vote a particular candidate, neither could a husband, the wife? Are they not aware that one Samuel Gumsu (SG) Ikoku of Action Group (AG) of Obafemi Awolowo, actually contested against his own father Alvan Ikoku of United National Independent Party (UNIP), defeated him in Igboland and lived after to eat in the same plate with the father? By the way, image of the older is on the N10 note, apart from the Alvan Ikoku College of Education, now a university, named after him.
Ok. What if you manage to intimidate the shop owners, some of them, whom by the way, are close to the corridors of power, what about those apprentices that run errands and hustle for them? Do you think that their bosses could direct them on where to vote during elections? No! So, the basic truth which everyone has to hear is that the project has failed. It failed even before it started.
The mistake anyone would make is to accept the accompanying narrative they’re trying to push through that this is about Igbo and Yoruba, rather than what it actually is – the agenda of the APC to remain in office anyways, whichever ways. Which rivalry would be greater than that between Zik and Awolowo? Yet, under the UPN of Awo, every Igbo child in Lagos, went to school free just like their Yoruba counterparts.
Many Igbo residents became landlords by buying the Jakande houses, where many of them or their children still live today, without having to know anyone, outside simply being lucky enough to win the balloting through which they were allocated, just like other residents in Lagos.
Nobody ever heard the odious refrain of Ndigbo wanting to take over Lagos. Yes, nobody did for one singular reason. Baba kekere, could simply go to bed the whole of election period and wake up the next day after balloting to pick up more than 80 per cent of the votes for the simple reason of being at home with the people.
Why wouldn’t he? In and out of office, the only luxury attached to his name was his ubiquitous Datsun Laurel and his personal living house at Ilupeju. Even his daily breakfast of moi-moi and ogi, was so popular that it became an open knowledge to every Lagosian.
Compare that simple, detached lifestyle to the prodigal profligacy, licentiousness and open gluttony associated to his successors, especially under the APC regime. Then, you’ll understand why a Jakande would donate vast areas of land for the development of the Alaba International Market, just to open up Lagos to investments and why his counterparts in APC, would demolish prime buildings in the same market, to achieve the direct opposite.
If you’re still at sea, it was the selfsame Jakande that declared Lagos a no-man’s land and for good reason. Today that statement he made to lobby other Nigerians to join in developing the city like its counterparts across the world, is now being turned on its head to achieve other negative ends all because of bad politics.
Don’t ask me how long this will last, because I don’t know. But one sure thing is that it won’t last forever. If the reign of impunity of the PDP could end so abruptly, if Nigeria could survive the horrible era of Abacha, then this tempest too will pass! That I’m sure of.
My name is Sunny Igboanugo and I’m The Tiny Voice!
