Lagos community protests alleged plan to demolish over 300 homes for rail project

Hundreds of landlords and residents successful a assemblage wrong the Ojo country of Lagos State, connected Thursday, staged a protestation against an alleged program by the Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority, LAMATA, and different agencies to demolish much than 300 homes for a obstruction project.

The demonstrators, who marched done parts of the neighbourhood, carried placards appealing to Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu to intervene.

Some of the inscriptions warned that the projected demolition could displace tens of thousands of residents and impact homes, places of worship, healthcare facilities and businesses.

The protesters described the planned workout arsenic unjust and contrary to owed process, alleging intimidation and harassment by officials, arsenic good arsenic disregard for an existing tribunal bid said to person halted the demolition.

Speaking connected behalf of the community, the group’s coordinator, Iniobong Offiong, said the affected country comprises 4 estates, with astir 315 houses and an estimated colonisation of 20,000 radical developed implicit respective decades.

He alleged that authorities officials, accompanied by information personnel, entered the assemblage successful May 2025 nether the guise of conducting a census, lone to aboriginal pass residents that the country had been earmarked for acquisition and demolition.

According to him, the authorities justified the determination connected grounds of overriding nationalist interest, stating that the onshore was needed f...