* Navy says raid targeted illegal settlement, criminals
* Activists say evictions leaving thousands homeless
* U.N. warns of housing crisis as population surges
By Libby George
LAGOS, Jan 24 (Reuters) - The men in naval uniforms charged
into the Nigerian waterfront village of Okun Glass in the
morning, chased out the residents, then called in the
bulldozers.
De facto village leader, 75-year-old Dauda Musa, said he
fled as the men fired guns into the air. "They demolished our
homes," he said, standing in the rubble of what was once home to
3,000 people down the coast from the megacity Lagos.
Nigeria's navy said it had moved in to clear an illegal
settlement - and accused some of the residents of vandalising
nearby pipelines to steal crude. "This operation was not
conducted in secrecy," naval commander Thomas Otuji said.
Musa said his fellow villagers were farmers and fishermen,
not thieves. And rights groups say the raid on Jan. 3 was part
of a much wider trend where the government, backed by the
military, clears informal settlements to make way for luxury
housing and other developments.
The accusations and counter-accusations highlight an
increasingly fraught confrontation between officials, activists
and small communities, exacerbated by the dramatic expansion of
Nigeria's cities, most of all Lagos - a coastal giant that
dwarfs the capital Abuja inland.
"There has been persistent evictions across Lagos. Dozens of
communities on the island have been evicted," Akinrolabu Samuel,
a campaigner with the Nigeria Slum/Informal Settlement
Federation, said at a rally against the evictions this week.
"It's because of real estate," he added. "It's for real
estate development."
HOUSING CRISIS
Around 600,000 new people arrive in Lagos every year,
according to the stats group BudgIT, many of them pouring into
ramshackle settlements, joining thousands of others impoverished
families who have lived their for generations.
The United Nations said in September Nigeria was struggling
to deal with a mounting housing crisis - and mass evictions were
making the situation worse. In 2017, a coalition of communities won a court judgement
against Lagos state government, arguing that evictions without
notice and resettlement were cruel, inhumane and degrading.
The government appealed, and the case was this week
adjourned to June 2021.
The Nigerian government has regularly defended the evictions
and demolitions, saying the have targeted settlements that are
homes to criminal gangs, making them a security threat.
The "administration is law-abiding ... But that does not
mean it will allow indiscriminate erection of shanties on the
right of way for roads and other projects," said Gbenga Omotoso,
commissioner for information and strategy for Lagos state
government.
In this case, he said, the state government had not ordered
the demolition of Okun Glass. "It may have been a security
matter on which the Navy can speak," Omotoso added.
Back on the coast, villagers picked through broken wood and
crushed concrete, looking for anything salvageable underneath
the coconut and mango trees that they said they had harvested
for decades.
"They chased us into the lagoon with our wives and
children," said Dauda Musa. "We are left with nothing."