29/10/2025
The insensibility and lack of emotional intelligence by Nigerian leaders is illustrated by this article below:
In Lagos, a young man who just returned from Canada stood in tears as his newly completed duplex in Ajao Estate came crashing down.
He said, “I did everything right. Survey, receipts, even the C of O was already in process. What else do they want from us?”
Across town, a mother of three who ran a small school in Lekki begged the bulldozer man to let her remove her classroom chairs before they started. He refused. Minutes later, the only school in that small community was gone. Flattened in the name of “urban renewal.”
These weren’t shanties. They were proper, modern buildings. Planned, approved, and built with life savings… yet destroyed because of so-called unperfected titles. And after the dust settles? The same lands are quietly handed over to estate developers.
In Kano, old traders watched in disbelief as their shops at the Eid Ground and Hajj Camp Market were torn down. One elderly man fainted as his shop, built over 20 years ago, was reduced to dust. He murmured, “I bought this land from the government. They gave me papers. Now another government says it’s fake.” This isn’t development.
It’s political vendetta. Every new government undoing what the last one did, punishing citizens in the process.
In Kaduna, families were displaced in the same name — urban renewal.
A widow in Barnawa told her story:
Her husband died during the lockdown. She used his gratuity to build two small rental houses.
Last year, the bulldozers came.
No notice. No compensation. Just one word, “Encroachment.” Now, she sleeps in her church compound with her grandchildren.
In Edo, and across parts of the East, small plazas, homes, and shops have been leveled too. All in the name of restoring order. Recently, they even started demolishing buildings allegedly used by kidnappers.
How did we reach this kind of moral confusion? A building doesn’t commit a crime. A landlord can’t always know who his tenant really is. If we follow that same logic, then police stations where officers take bribes should also be demolished. Owning a home in Nigeria isn’t just about shelter. It’s a mark of success, a proof that after years of struggle, you finally escaped the fear of rent, eviction, and homelessness. It’s the one safe investment most people trust. A retirement plan, an inheritance, a roof over their heads when all else fails.
To take that away is to push people back into the cesspool of poverty. I know families that completely fell apart after their homes were demolished.
Marriages collapsed. Children dropped out of school. Some never recovered.
When you destroy a man’s house, you don’t just take his walls, you crush his dignity and erase his sense of safety.
Good governance means mass housing, not mass demolitions. A responsible government prevents illegality before it happens. You don’t let people build full estates, sell them to innocent buyers, and then show up years later with bulldozers.
That’s not regulation.
That’s wickedness with a logo.
- Writren by Rev. Austine Oviawe.
