Inside Lagos's Demolition Drive: Makoko Is Cleared for Luxury Condos as Thousands Lose Their Homes

The waterfront slum of Makoko, a community of stilted houses that has hung over the Lagos lagoon for more than a century, is being torn down on the orders of the Lagos State government to make way for a luxury waterfront development that the Nigerian press has dubbed the "Dubai of Africa" project. NPR documented the latest wave of demolitions in a report published Sunday, finding that more than 12 people have died — including two infants — and tens of thousands have been displaced since bulldozers first arrived in late December.

Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu has defended the operation as a public-safety clearance, telling reporters earlier this year, "What we are doing is not demolishing the whole of Makoko. We are clearing areas to ensure they do not encroach on the Third Mainland Bridge and to keep residents away from high-tension lines." Government surveyors initially marked a 100-meter buffer around the overhead power corridor, but NGOs and the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights say the demolitions have routinely extended 250 to 500 meters into the settlement, far beyond any plausible safety zone.

Beneath the safety justification sits a 2021 land agreement between the Lagos State government and FBT Coral Estate Limited, a private developer that owns a 75 percent stake in a planned waterfront project that would include a five-star hotel, banquet hall, yacht club, and high-end retail. The state government holds the remaining 25 percent. Sand dredging and land reclamation along the cleared sections of the lagoon began before residents were notified of the demolition schedule, according to community organizers, and several court injunctions issued earlier this year were ignored by demolition crews who arrived with armed police escorts.

Displaced families described losing everything in a matter of hours. "We now sleep on mats under a shed outside our pastor's house, while we try to look for our lost belongings and figure out what to do next," 30-year-old Tunde Agando told Al Jazeera in February. Community groups estimate that more than 40,000 people have been displaced from Makoko since demolitions resumed in late 2025, while a January report from Channels Television cited a higher figure of 300,000 across the broader waterfront. Many families are now living in canoes, on church floors, or in informal camps along the lagoon's edge.

United Nations human rights experts have publicly condemned the operation, with a February statement warning that the scale and pattern of forced evictions in Lagos could amount to "domicide," a term that describes the deliberate destruction of homes and that the UN special rapporteur on adequate housing has argued may give rise to individual criminal and civil liability under international law. The Lagos State House of Assembly briefly ordered a halt to the demolitions in February, but the bulldozers resumed weeks later. With Lagos projected to overtake Cairo as Africa's most populous city within the next decade, urban planners say the Makoko clearance is a preview of much larger conflicts to come as state-backed luxury development collides with the city's vast informal settlements.