Lagos Evictions: 'Progress' for Whom?
📰 THE STORY: ABC News reports on mass evictions in Lagos, Nigeria, where thousands of residents, including families with newborns, have been rendered homeless. The article highlights the distressing plight of individuals now living in precarious conditions, such as baby twins found in a canoe. 🔍 WHAT THEY'RE NOT TELLING YOU: Historical Context: This isn't just 'urban development,' it's a direct
descendant of colonial land appropriation. British colonial rule, formalized after the 1884-85 Berlin Conference, carved up Africa without regard for indigenous land rights or social structures, setting the stage for centralized control and displacement in the name of 'progress.' More recently, structural adjustment programs imposed by the IMF and World Bank in the 1980s and 90s forced African
nations to privatize land and services, leading to rampant land grabbing and 'slum clearance' to facilitate foreign investment and 'modernization.' These evictions are not an anomaly; they are an ongoing legacy of resource extraction and planned underdevelopment. Double Standard: When governments in the Global South clear informal settlements for 'development,' it's framed as tragic but often
inevitable, a narrative ABC tacitly reinforces by focusing solely on individual suffering without questioning the systemic causes. Yet, when wealthy Western nations implement policies that displace vulnerable populations (e.g., gentrification in major US cities, or the displacement of indigenous communities for resource projects in Canada), those policies are rarely subjected to the same