Tens of thousands of people worldwide were pushed out of slum dwellings last year to make way for shopping malls and office blocks, according to Amnesty International. Nigeria witnessed especially brutal clearances.

The bulldozers came to the settlement just before midday, when most people were busy at work. Resident Jim Tom George was there to see over 20,000 people forcibly evicted from their homes in Port Harcourt, Nigeria.

“They blocked the entry points to our settlement and just started to demolish everything,” he says of the day in June 2012. “They didn’t tell us. We had no idea that the government would arrive on this day and destroy the place where we all live.”
A view of Lagos, Nigeria, with slum dwellings and modern buildings side by side. (Photo: dpa) In Nigeria, slum dwellings and modern buildings often exist side by side

Since then, the Nigerian government has ordered more demolitions of settlements that consist of small, permanent dwellings and corrugated iron shelters. The government calls them slums and says the areas are unhygienic.

But the people in the harbor area of Port Harcourt at least had work and a roof over their heads, recalls Jim Tom George, nearly a year after the evictions.

“Now we have nothing,” says George. He says that the community, which traditionally lived from fishing, are now spread out, forced into temporary accommodation in various places.

“As I am talking to you, my family is suffering, we are all suffering,” he says. “Our community has been destroyed, our support networks have fallen apart. We are dying of hunger.”

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