Many Nigerians are homeless, not because they sleep in the streets, but they do so in places where they find shelters which are not compared to an ideal human habitation. ELEOJO IDACHABA examines this in this report.
Thirty-five year-old Nora, a hair stylist from Nasarawa state, has been residing in Kado Biko village inside Gwarinpa, Abuja, since 2009. She, according to her place of abode, can be said to be homeless.
This is because in her makeshift home (porta cabin), which is like the popular ‘container’ that also houses her saloon, lives three other young ladies she brought to Abuja from Nasarawa to live with her along with her six-year-old son.
For Nora and her siblings (as she refers to them), the container is both a house and her business premises. From here, she and the four occupants wake up from daily, have their bath in another makeshift construction behind the saloon and resume work. Not only is the container too small to accommodate five people, it is unusually hot at night. In a nutshell, the place is devoid of the niceties of an ideal human home, but she said “we can manage it, sir.”
While speaking with Blueprint Weekend, Nora said, “Thank God you have known me for more than six years now. If I tell anyone that five people live here, would they believe? I can’t afford to pay N800, 000 for a single room here in Gwarinpa, but here, I pay nothing except the little token the local chief sends his boys to collect every month. If I move far from here, the amount we would spend on transportation would be so high to bear; so for now, this is our home even though there is nothing here compared to what is found in an ideal home.”
The same also applies to James, a curator who has been living under the Wuse Zone 6 Bridge overlooking Wuse II in Abuja since 2020. This graduate of Fine Arts from Ahmadu Bello University Zaria said for him, anywhere is presently a home as long as he can lay his head.
James who said he found shelter under the Zone 6 Bridge after he was dislodged from the Arts and Craft Village near Silverbird Gallery in Abuja noted that living under a bridge is like being condemned to a maximum prison.
“It’s not a choice that I retire to sleep under a bridge, but I had no option when I came here. The only good thing is that here, no one threatens demolition or eviction as long as one complies with the rule of good neighbourliness. I am not the only one here as you can see.
“Almost everyone here is single except for a few individuals squatting with their female friends, but no sensible man would bring his wife and children or entire family members to live with him here, no matter the pressure.”
On whether there are toilets and bathrooms, he asked, “Constructed by whom? The flowing canal is the toilet while people take their baths behind those bridge bars. Like I said, almost everyone here is male; so the issue of privacy does not really matters. Happily, I would be moving out of this place very soon because staying here has afforded me the opportunity of saving some money to rent a new shop at the craft village near Life Camp. Although there are no provisions for sleeping over there, but the place is far better than sleeping under a bridge.”
Nora and James’ examples portray what homelessness means to some persons in our modern cities, especially Abuja. Although there are many structures all over the place signifying shelters, but according to investigation, a good number of them are bereft of ideal standard for human habitation.
As a matter of fact, it is estimated that currently in Nigeria, there are 24.4 million homeless people.
Investigations by this reporter showed that in Abuja in particular, although new houses are springing up in almost every corner, they are uninhabitable and in most cases unaffordable. In many cases, some of them are vacant.
Demolitions
Abuja, the nation’s capital is one of the cities in modern times that encourage homelessness. According to Patrick Okhiria, a property agent, frequent demolitions have contributed largely to homelessness.
“Since 2005, there have been series of demolitions in Abuja. I can tell you that there are many people that have been affected a number of times with many of such men living separately from their families. In many cases, the wife and children live elsewhere from the man. For such people, it’s not about comfort, but about finding anywhere to spend a night,” he said.
Okhiria may not be wrong after all because in an interaction with 16-year-old Godwin, an SS3 student of Government at Secondary School Dutse, he is not living with his parent even though they are in FCT as a result of demolition.
“My parents moved to Kaduna road last year because our house was demolished in Dutsen Mpauma located on Bwari Dutse road. As at then, I was already in SS2, so couldn’t afford to change school any longer. I now live with my classmate’s parent here in Dutse so that I can be close to my school. I will write my WAEC next year. Most times, I don’t leave school until 6pm because even though the people I’m staying with know my parents very well, it is not very easy, besides, the house is very small. Even in Kaduna road, the house my parents are living in is still under construction,” he said.
Succour in uncompleted buildings
Although Mr. Ifeanyi Abonyi, a teacher in one of the private schools in Dutse, now lives in his house at Obasanjo Road today, the apartment is still under construction, but he said, “The good thing is that I am not paying any rent.”
Ifeanyi said he moved into the place in 2020 just when Covid-19 pandemic was ravaging the country. This is because the rent of the house he was living at Kubwa village expired and there was no money to renew it, but the owner was not cooperating; meanwhile he said he already bought a plot of labd on Obasanjo road and was developing the place gradually.
“As at that time, I already bought a plot with the hope of developing gradually because I just wedded then and needs time to recover, but due to the pressure from my former landlord, my newly wedded wife and I moved into our house which hadn’t windows, no ceiling, no burglary, wasn’t plastered and the roofing wasn’t even complete. Somehow, I noticed that many of the houses around us occupied by their owners were also uncompleted. Of course, there was no light, but we stayed on and began to put in place a few things to make it habitable. Till now, I haven’t completed it such that one can beat his chest as having an ideal home, but we live there. This is the situation in the country right now.”
Okhiria also said, “Frequent demolitions have sent many people into living in uncompleted buildings. If you go round all the uncompleted buildings in the city, you would find that at night, they are occupied; that is why you will find cloths hanging on lines inside. Many of those people are victims of demolition and because they cannot afford a new place, they find succor in uninhabitable places with the risk of building collapse and other hazards.”
‘Govt’s effort not enough’
The present administration in the country has assured that mass housing programmes would be done in all the major cities in the country if state governments would make lands available. In Abuja, although low income housing schemes have been provided in places like Gwagwalada, Kuje and Zuba for low income earners, but these are still a far cry from the number of persons currently either displaced by demolition or are outrightly out of jobs and cannot afford to finance the mortgage system attached to such buildings. This has therefore left many wondering if Nigeria can actually meet the demand of Sustained Development Goal (SDG) concerning housing for all.
Justice Obaka, an Abuja resident who wants to overcome homelessness, said, “What the government appears to be doing in the housing sector is like a drop of water in Atlantic Ocean. They may complain of paucity of funds, but funds are always available to them when politicians want to go into campaigns, but when it’s time for social services, they always complain of funds. My brother, like Ayi Kwei Armah wrote, The Beautiful Ones are not yet Born.”
