Risikat Omoluyi, a 67-year-old resident of Magbon in Ibeju-Lekki, Lagos State, resided in her son Shina’s home until three months ago.

She considered the home, owned by Shina, as her haven, having dedicated her life to raising and supporting her children.

However, Omoluyi’s life took an unexpected turn when government officials arrived in her community and designated buildings, including her son’s, for demolition as part of the Lagos-Calabar coastal road project.

Resigned to the inevitability of the demolition order, Omoluyi reportedly stated, "This will not occur while I am alive."

Prior to the commencement of the demolitions, Shina’s mother had passed away, just three days after the buildings were marked for destruction. Also, it is to be noted that another resident of Magbon also died due to the demolition notice.

“I’ve been mourning many things since my two-room self-contained and one-room self-contained buildings were marked for demolition: I have been mourning the sudden death of my mother, the imminent loss of my buildings and the fear of where and how to forge ahead when they finally bulldoze the buildings, which are all I have in my life,” Shina said

While Shina’s building has not yet been bulldozed, many houses have been demolished in Magbon, Iberekodo and Museyo communities.

On February 3, Fatai Moshood Ekundayo, a medical doctor and founder of Mosfat Combination Health Centre in Iberekodo, was caught by surprise and shock when some government officials arrived with a bulldozer to demolish his health facility. At this time, some patients were still on admission in the hospital.

According to Ekundayo, the metres of land initially marked didn’t affect his hospital. Therefore, he had no reason to panic or make preparations to relocate. But on the day the government personnel wanted to commence operations, they insisted they had to go beyond the marked area. This would then claim a part of the medical house.

“They came and said they would extend beyond the pegged point. I began battling for words to appeal to them to stay within the marked area. But that fell on deaf ears. We told them patients were inside. They said we should discharge them immediately so that they could do their work,” Ekundayo said.

Some patients were abruptly discharged, while others were moved to a temporary location for them to continue receiving the necessary attention. But this came at a cost that the doctor and his team never prepared for.

After the frantic effort to make the officials stick to the initial metres of land marked fell through, Ekundayo took it upon himself to engage some people to carefully demolish the affected part rather than leave it to the whims of the state officials.

Such are the stories of grief and panic residents and families whose properties in these typically low-income, agrarian communities have been subjected to over the ongoing construction of the N15 trillion coastal super highway being built by the current federal government.

Awarded to HiTech Construction Company Ltd., owned by Gilbert Chagoury, President Bola Tinubu’s long-time ally, the 700-kilometre road will run through nine states, including Lagos, Ondo, Ogun, Bayelsa, Delta, Port Harcourt, Cross River and Akwa Ibom.

Residents of Iberekodo and Magbon communities have lost their homes, but there is uncertainty regarding government compensation.

Not only have living residents lost their homes and belongings, but deceased community members have also lost their burial grounds to the road construction project. Many families had interred their loved ones on or near their homes.

Hundreds of houses are located within the designated 42-meter zone for the coastal road on both sides of the existing road leading to the Lagos Free Trade Zone. However, the demolitions have only affected houses on one side, leaving residents on the other side anxious about the impending loss of their homes.

Hassan Sainat Alaba’s family has lost several homes to the demolitions, including her grandfather’s eight-room building and her mother’s six-room house with a shop.

Beyond that, the body of Alaba’s grandfather, who died 18 years ago, had to be exhumed because of the development. The family has now reburied him somewhere else. This happened to many families who had dead ones within the length of land marked for the road construction.

“I am more than 50 years old now. My grandfather built this house long before I was born, and I was brought up in the same house. But the government has demolished it. My mother’s house was not spared, too,” Alaba said on Wednesday.

“Losing a house in which you were brought up can be a difficult experience. It is even more painful when you have to disturb your long-buried, dead loved ones. It brings back tearful memories. It’s like a stab in the heart.

“They paid us N30,000 per grave, which was too low compared to the expenses we incurred. To exhume his body alone, we paid N24,000 to those we engaged. We incurred other expenses from our personal purse.”

Several residents mentioned that they had not been paid compensations.

On May 1, David Umahi, the Minister of Works, presided over the well-televised payment of N2.75 billion monetary compensations to some property owners affected by the construction. “Today, we are paying over N2 billion in compensation just from channel 0 to channel 3,” Umahi said

It could not be determined whether Iberekodo and Magbon are within these channels 0 to 3 mentioned by the minister. However, it is a fact they are within the first 47.47 kilometres that run through Ahmadu Bello in Lagos down to Lekki Deep Seaport being funded by the federal government.

A resident, who identified as Balogun Olamide and whose grandfather’s single storeyed building of 15 rooms and mother’s building were brought to the ground, said her family was unsure the government would pay compensation.

“We heard the government has even paid some people in Lekki. That’s how it has been; it has been a story from a far distance. They are not even saying anything about us here,” Olamide said.

Yet, the rubbles of the houses have been transported to a land owned by a developer for the demolition official’s personal financial gains, according to some of the residents.

On May 14, the Federal Ministry of Works convened a meeting called “Focused Group Stakeholders’ Continuous Engagement/Workshop” to interact with affected communities. A community representative at the meeting told FIJ that the ministry failed to provide any assuring statement as to when property owners would be compensated.

“They only told us that it would be paid before the end of the year. It was at that meeting that they also told us that the road has been rerouted to run through the wetland at the back of the Ikerekodo, but we are not convinced yet. We have been pestering them to get the talk about rerouting published. Once that is done, our fear about further destruction of our properties would be resolved. We don’t want mere talks without publication,” said the representative.

He described the statement as vague and unassuring.

A site engineer, who said he had no authority to speak with the media and asked not be to named, siad that compensation payment would be in phases. “If anyone is saying that the government isn’t talking about compensations, that person is lying. We have marked 42 metres on both sides. We have perfected plans for payment, and I am saying it categorically that they would be paid soon. The process is in three stages: identification of affected properties, evaluation of those properties and payment proper.”

The engineer overseeing the project indicated that the first two phases have been completed, with the final phase yet to be addressed. He clarified that the demolitions carried out to date have been "partial demolitions." As a result of this partial approach, residents have been allowed to salvage certain building materials from their homes, including roofing sheets, windows, and other items.

Subsequent to the destruction of well-water sources in Ikerekodo, residents have encountered difficulties in obtaining water for household use. Compensation for each destroyed well has been capped at N30,000.

When approached for comment, the previously quoted official asserted that the compensation provided to residents did not originate from the government but rather from their "site runnings."

“We have agreed with the residents that compensations will be paid for their buildings. The government has not paid for demolitions. When they want to pay, it will be in full. What we have paid them was from our site runnings, not from the government purse. It was we, the field supervisors, who decided to pay them from our site runnings,” the official said.

“The amount we paid varied. There were those we gave N25,000, and some got N30,000. There are documents that backed this up. We have been transparent as much as we can.”

Residents have disputed the adequacy of the compensation, stating that the cost of a single concrete ring is N24,000. They allege discrepancies, claiming that unofficial sources suggest the government allocated N150,000 for such facilities.

Residents have raised concerns about the field workers’ assertion that they disbursed compensation for graves and well-water sources from the designated field operations budget. They question the validity of these claims.

“We only succeeded in mounting a lot of pressure, coupled with a threat to stop them from doing their work if they would not leave one well-water source for us until their main road construction is approaching the spot,” a resident (name withheld) said

Residents raised concerns about the safety of crossing the bustling road, especially for children who retrieve water before school, citing potential hazards for young pedestrians.

With the diminished availability of water sources, the remaining well serves as a lifeline for households relying on it for their essential water requirements.