Our plans for those evicted from apartments under bridges –Lagos gov’t

The Lagos State Government has said those living under the Dolphin Estate Bridge in Ikoyi will be profiled before they are temporarily taken care of.

The state Commissioner for Environment, Tokunbo Wahab, disclosed this while responding to questions on Channels TV’s Sunday Politics.

He, however, declined to confirm if the affected people would eventually be resettled or not.

The commissioner said: “We do a lot of things with NGOs and churches with respect to some of these individuals but there must be profiling first. Upon profiling them, we give them a platform to register.

“Upon doing that, we will then ask ‘how do we mitigate the impact of this displacement on them?’ It is when they register you and they capture your data that they can plan for you.

“In as much as we want people to live in a better society, you can’t tell me staying under a bridge is acceptable.”

He disclosed that a bridge was shut down some months back in Lagos because of a fire incident under the bridge “that cost Lagosians so much pain and inconvenience”.

He also said there had been reports of robberies and killings under the bridges across the state, insisting that the government was determined to make the state safe for everyone.

Wahab therefore warned that staying under the bridge would not be tolerated.

The Lagos State Government last Wednesday discovered 86 apartments under the Dolphin Estate Bridge, Ikoyi, where tenants pay N250,000 annual rent.

Wahab had posted the videos of 86 partitioned rooms, sized “10×10 and 12×10” on his X account on Wednesday.

He added that the enforcement team of the Ministry of Environment and Water Resources had successfully removed all structures, including a container utilised for various illegal activities, from beneath the Dolphin Estate Bridge.