by Okechukwu Effoduh
Colonialism is being advanced in Nigeria today not just in the everyday favouritism expressed by the Lagos State Government to rich expatriate investors but also to the corporatist-capitalist-Lekki-living-and-Victoria-Island-working-Nigerians who represent these foreign scouts.
Through colonialist private law regimes of contract law and property, the Lagos State Government has justified the dispossession of local Nigerians from their fundamental right to exist: destroying the shelters of poor #OtodoGbame residents for spaces to build posh beachside apartments for the armed-robbery-type rich. Destroying the existence of the poorest-of-the-poor for the luxury of the richest-of-the-rich.
What Lagos is telling the people of #OtodoGbame is that they should go and jump into the lagoon for all they care (a suicide ritual gaining grounds in Nigeria today), because what is more important than their pain-bought and self-built shelters (an evidence of the failure of the state to provide housing shelters), is the need for the rich to have luxurious condos for their #BYOB parties, photoshoots and Zumba classes, including for their sexy chihuahuas to have space to play Frisbee by the beach sand.
This type of sovereign power from the private sector is a restatement of colonial inequality.
Op–ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija
Leave a reply