Wealth to waste: Sad tale of once thriving Ebute-Ilaje-Bariga community

Like many riverine areas, the source of livelihood at Ebute Ilaje in Bariga is tied to the water and like other riverine areas, the mode of living is poor and below the average standard of hygiene set for residential areas by health bodies. AKIN ADEWAKUN reports that the residents however prefer their way of life and are unwilling to vacate the area or change their trade.

When the Lagos State governor, Akinwunmi Ambode decided to pay the people of Ebute Ilaje Bariga, a riverine area in  Bariga Local Council Development Area of Lagos, a visit, on January 30, 2016, the first Environmental sanitation day in the year, little did the people of this riverine community envisaged the far-reaching effects the visit would have on their social and economic lives.

For the people, nothing was ‘strange’ in the governor’s unscheduled visit, which lasted for close to one hour. After all, his predecessor, Babatunde Fashola, the incumbent Minister for Power, Works and Housing had paid similar visit to the area in the past. The visit, therefore, had raised the hopes of residents of the area, especially of better things; considering the life-changing effects such august visit had had on other communities, earlier visited by the governor.

It was, therefore, a matter of time before the community, whose economic mainstay is derived from fishing activities, sand dredging and mercantilism, due to its proximity to water, would start experiencing a new lease of life, the residents had thought!

“Fashola had been here while he was governor of the state. I was sitting in this place that day, and he even waved to me while he was passing by this place. So we never knew Ambode’s visit was ominous. We thought it was a continuation of the interest the previous government had in this place and honestly, we residents had hoped for the best,” said 98 year-old Madam Celina Megbuwawon

Though the visit was actually life-changing, at the end of the day, but, unfortunately, not the form Madam Megbuwawon and others, had wanted it.

An inkling of the ugly fate that was to befall the community was given on February 4, last year, few days after the governor’s visit, by the state’s Commissioner for Water Front Infrastructure Development, Aremo Segun Oniru.

Oniru had summoned sand sellers from Abule Ilaje Bariga to his office to apprise them of the outcome of the governor’s one-hour visit to the community, few days earlier. The Commissioner had reportedly told his bewildered guests that the governor, citing security reasons, would want them look elsewhere to practice a trade they had inherited from their progenitor, and with which they fend for their families.

Another meeting was again held with stakeholders in the sand dredging business at the Adeyemi Bero Hall in Alausa, the Lagos state seat of power, on February 12, 2016.

The meeting, said to have been convened at the instance of the state governor, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode, was to mark what many in Abule Ilaje would later describe as the beginning of the end of socio-economic activities in this largely riverine area.

The governor, in the meeting that involved traditional rulers from the state, the manual and machine sand dredgers and other critical stakeholders, was said to have expressed the state government’s concerns on the security threats the activities of some of the dredgers had constituted to the government and people of the state.

In consequence, dredging activities in every part of the state, he said, would be regulated by the government to ensure that security was not compromised. The governor was also said to have made his intention, to put a halt to dredging activities in Ado and Ajah communities in the state, as a result of the vulnerability of those communities, known.

At the end of the meeting, representatives of Abule Ilaje community were said to have heaved a sigh of relief since their activities could not be said to be of high risk to security in the state, and therefore it was a matter of time before a reprieve would come their way, they had thought.

But they were wrong! On February 28, 2016, a letter, from the state government, giving sand sellers and dredgers in the area, 48 hours to move their work tools and machines from the community was delivered by the Commissioner for Water Front Infrastructure to the community.

“We were to find out, later that only Abule Ilaje was affected. Activities are ongoing in other places that were shut the same time with this place, unfortunately, we don’t know why. We’ve tried to find out from the state government what we have done wrong,” explained Mr. Kazeem Adesola, Chairman Dust Sand Nigeria Ltd, an umbrella body of sand sellers in the area.

Nigerian Tribune however learnt that recent criminal activities in the state, especially the increasing incidents of kidnapping and activities of some groups in Bariga area could have informed the government’s decision, a claim the community had since refuted. According to Kazeem, there had been no single criminal activities in the community since the governor came into power on May 29, 2015.

“The people you see here come for one business or the other. You know before the ban, this place used to be a beehive of activities.

Everybody had a mission and the so-called cult activities they talk about are far from here,” Kazeem stated.

This much was also corroborated by Madam Megbuwawon, who added that residents even, at a time, volunteered to build a police post for the community but could not do this because there was no response from the government.

“We are law-abiding citizens of the state, and we would not in any way involve ourselves in any activity that would compromise the security of the state

She explained that before the ‘stop work order’, the community used to be a beehive of activities.

“People build boats; people go across the waters to go and dredge sand and bring such sand to the place for buyers who come from different parts of the city to buy. If you had come at that time, you would have seen tippers all over the place, either waiting to load sand or loading. But you can see now that all these are no longer there. We’ve been waiting for the past few months for the government to rescind this decision to ban activities here,” he stated.

But, it seems the waiting game would last for a little longer, with the dreams of re-igniting the good old days in the community fading by the day. A visit to the community by Nigerian Tribune revealed that, though the community is expectant, the government seems not in a hurry to lift the ban.

Lamenting the development, Madam Megbuwawon, says her progenitors and others had contributed to making the community what it is today but expressed regrets that she and some others were being made to suffer such anguish at old ages.

“Woe betides the place where all these things are coming from. I never envisaged a moment such as this. I’m sure this decision was taken by the governor because he was misinformed, that is why I want to use this opportunity to call on Governor Ambode to temper justice with mercy,” she stated.

Megbuwawon, who now struggles to survive, called on the government to lift the stop- work order to enable the people of the area go back to the only business the community is known for. She argued that such intervention had become necessary to avoid further untimely deaths in the community; since the ban had begun to take its toll on the residents. According to her, a lot of avoidable deaths had been recorded in the area in the past few months due to lack of funds.

Two incidents in the community in the past few weeks actually validated the above claims by Mama Megbuwawon. Besides the sudden death of Mrs. Iyabo Ayinde, a member of the Sand Sellers’ Association in the community in February this year; Mr. Ephraim Atiyeye, the Chairman of the Ebute Ilaje Bariga Community Development Association also passed on same month due to his inability raise funds to meet some undisclosed medical challenge he had been nursing for some time.

“He looked quite hale and hearty the day he passed on. We all know death is a necessary end, but this one would have been avoided, if there were enough funds to buy drugs to treat that ailment,” explained a member of the community who craved anonymity.

Pa Atiyeye was one of those people affected by the ‘stop work order’ of the state government, and, just like others, he had been struggling to survive.

“Sometimes people think we exaggerate some of the things, but these two incidents are the latest of death occurrences, induced by a complete halt in activities here,” Kazeem state.

Perhaps to drive home the ‘idleness claim’ of Kazeem and Megbuwawon, a cluster of some able- bodied men were seen at Mama Megbuwawon’s compound, sitting idly, chatting and waiting for the time those ‘glorious days’ would be brought back to the community.

According to Madam Megbuwawon, the group of young men worked for her; since she no longer had the strength to carry out such strenuous tasks. Survival had been an issue and sometimes they had to do menial jobs outside the community to enable them make ends meet, since she no longer had the wherewithal to take care of them.

“I don’t even have money to buy my tobacco, not to talk of taking care of these people. They are my labourers, they live in my house, but what do I do?” asked the old woman, who claimed to have lost her two male children that would have provided some financial ‘succour’.

But, in spite of the refusal of the government to heed the several earlier appeals from the community, in the past, Kazeem still believes the issue is not intractable. He and some of his colleagues would still want the state government to re-visit the issue; since he believes the directive was doing the economy of the individuals, the community and that of the state a lot of damage.

He argued that government derives a sizable income from their operations in form of levies the people pay, noting that since the no-work order was enforced nothing had been generated into the government’s coffers from their area.

“When we were working, we used to pay different levies to the three tiers of government: the local, the state and the federal governments.

But, since February last year when activities in the state were halted, government had not realized a kobo from here,” he stated.

Kazeem also assured the state government of the people’s commitment to carrying out their activities within the confines of the law.

“No violence has ever been recorded in this community before. Where they unleash such violence is far away from here, unless the government has a contrary report which it might want to share with us concerning that,” he stated.

Another resident, simply identified as Ayo, a student in one of the nation’s tertiary institutions, would however want the government to reconsider its stand, regarding the ban.

“Some of us used these jobs to sponsor ourselves in schools. Now we are stranded,” he stated.

But, as the argument continues to rage over the appropriateness or otherwise of that government’s decision, one thing that is obvious is that it might take some time before the good old days are brought back in Ebute Ilaje Community, even if the government decides to change its decision.

Efforts of Nigerian Tribune to reach the State Commissioner for Water Infrastructure proved futile but a staff of at the ministry, who craved anonymity, explained that there are no new developments yet to indicate that the government is planning to change its mind on the community.

Perhaps a bigger challenge for the sand dredgers is the fact that the people would have to begin again if such pardons were granted; since most of the work tools had gone bad for the simple reason that they had not been in use for such a long time.

“Whoever would want to go back into the business would be looking for several millions of naira because most of the things we use for the business are in a state of disrepair. For instance, to build the type of boat that we use to move sand on water to this place costs nothing less than one million naira now. So you can understand our plight,” argued Kazeem.