Where Are Squatter Settlements Located

Lagos squatter settlements

What are squatter settlements?

In Lagos, the lack of housing and rapid rate of urbanisation has forced millions of people to build their ain homes. These are typically on land they do not own. Withal, in Lagos, some homes have been built on h2o. Squatter settlements are any drove of buildings where the people take no legal rights to the land they are congenital upon. The people are living there illegally and do non ain the land. They provide housing for many of the globe'due south poorest people and offer basic shelter. Homes in squatter settlements are typically constructed from bit material including wood, plastic sheeting and corrugated metal when they are start built. Over time more sophisticated materials tin be used to improve the quality of housing.

Squatter settlements are not but institute in Lagos. They are located in all cities in depression-income countries and newly emerging countries all effectually the earth. They tin also be called informal settlements, shantytowns, favelas, barrios or slums.

Where are squatter settlements found in Lagos?

There are thirteen squatter settlements in Lagos, These are:

Agege
Ajegunle
Amukoko
Badia
Bariga
Bodija
Ijeshatedo/Itire
Ilaje
Iwaya
Makoko
Mushin
Oke-Offa Babasale
Somolu

The map below shows the location of a number of squatter settlements in Lagos.

Squatter settlements are institute all over Lagos. They are typically institute in areas where more wealthy people do not want to live. This includes marshland and country close to manufacture.

What are the bug of living in a squatter settlement?

Population density is very loftier in squatter settlements in Lagos. This is because of the lack of available land to build on. The expanse known to outsiders equally Makoko is actually 6 singled-out "villages" spread across land and water: Oko Agbon, Adogbo, Migbewhe, Yanshiwhe, Sogunro and Apollo. The commencement 4 are the floating communities, known as "Makoko on h2o"; the rest are based on land. In these floating communities, homes are built on stilts on the edge of the Lagos Lagoon. It is estimated that a quarter of a one thousand thousand people live in Makoko.

Makoko Squatter Settlement

The homes are built from materials such as forest and metal sheets. They do not have basic facilities or sanitation.

Virtually of the residents of Makoko work in the informal economy or make a living by fishing.

Should Makoko exist demolished or improved?

Even though it has many problems the people in Makoko are very proud and protective of their homes. Afterwards all, it is their dwelling house. Residents have already taken steps to improve services crisscrossing the lagoon bed are pipes, paid for and laid by enterprising residents to bring in clean h2o – for a modest fee – from boreholes in neighbouring Sogunro.

Makoko Floating School, designed by architect Kunlé Adeyemi, has become the customs's almost pop and famous building.

Makoko Floating School. Photograph: Andrew Esiebo for the Guardian

Doctors Without Borders opened a floating clinic in January 2011; although very popular when it launched, it stayed open less than a twelvemonth. Today Makoko continues to exist served past a network of breezy, unregistered clinics that attend to bones ailments. At that place are besides a number of traditional nascency attendants who deliver Makoko's babies in an atmosphere of high levels of maternal mortality.

However, the authorities want to annihilate it to help improve the image of the city. Though residents accept nowhere else to live. In recent years the authorities accept demolished areas of squatter settlements, like the one in 2012. Badia, a swampland settlement on the edge of the urban center's Apapa Port, was one of the worst-hit targets. More than fifteen,000 people have lost their homes.