On Thursday, November 27, 2025, residents of Precious Seed (a.k.a. Ferry) community awoke to find the Lagos State Task Force officials and an excavator from the Lagos State Emergency Management Agency (LASEMA) outside the community gates.
Community leaders, together with legal counsel from Justice & Empowerment Initiatives (JEI), reportedly approached the Task Force officers on ground to intimate them of a supposedly subsisting court injunction which protects Precious Seed community, along with other waterfront areas of Lagos, against any eviction or demolition by the Lagos State Government and police under the Lagos State Command without prior consultation and resettlement of the affected people. The subsisting court orders from the Lagos State High Court were also pasted on the community gate and, pasted on the walls of buildings all around the community.
After confirming that they were there on instructions of the Lagos State Government, and that the Lagos State Commissioner of Police was very much aware, the Task Force officers on ground indicated that they would proceed with the demolition anyway.
To make way for the excavator to enter the community, the Task Force allgedly teargassed both residents and their legal counsel by the entrance of the community as they attempted to appeal to the officers to consider the consequences of disobedience of court order and allow time for them to place phone calls.
According to a joint statement by five groups campaigning against the eviction, no building within Precious Seed community had been previously marked by any agency of Lagos State Government, nor had any statutory or other paper notice been received.
They added that the only warning residents had was a brief visit from the Lagos State Task Force the day before they arrived, saying they were about to start demolishing the community. A teacher at a local NGO-run school near the entrance of the community, where over 120 pupils were sitting for their common entrance exams, was said to have pleaded with the Task Force not to proceed on account of the students.
The groups are JEI, Nigerian Slum/Informal Settlement Federation, Lagos Urban Development Initiative (LUDI), Global Rights and Centre for Children’s Health, Education, Orientation and Protection (CEE-HOPE).
They submitted: “By 8:20am on November 27, the LASEMA excavator accompanied by half a dozen officials in LASEMA uniforms, about two dozen heavily armed Task Force officers, and numerous agberos (also known as ‘area boys’ in Lagos) armed with machetes and sticks, began demolishing buildings. Many of the buildings taken down were well constructed multi-story block buildings with high-quality tiling on the floors and walls, including several churches.
“A widow who lost her husband less than four months ago and was still in morning, sat on the upstairs balcony of her two-story church and home, refusing for hours to leave the only property left to her by her late husband and telling the Task Force they would have to demolish her inside the building so she could join her husband. Another widow, whose recently deceased husband was the CDA Chairman of the community, had to be restrained and dragged away sobbing by her daughter as the demolition squad brought down the only property her late husband left her.”
As of April 2024, when Precious Seed reportedly conducted a house numbering exercise with support from the Nigerian Slum/Informal Settlement Federation, the community included 292 buildings, 996 residential households, 299 businesses, and an estimated population over 3,022 residents.
The excavator and Task Force reportedly moved down to the neighboring Lagos Street in Oworonshoki and demolished more homes there; still threatening to continue at Mosafejo Oworonshoki on Saturday, November 29. Across all this area, hundreds are said to be squatting in the rubble, protecting their belongings from looters from attack, with nowhere else sleep at night except outside.
The statement further disclosed: “This forced eviction is as heartless as any – taking place as December approaches and during the worst economic crisis Nigeria has seen in decades – and its impacts on residents are the same as in all the forced evictions that have taken place across Lagos and Nigeria from the recent to the distant past. Ordinary citizens are left without shelter to guard their belongings and their bodies against looting, sexual assault, weather and mosquitos.
“Without any preparation, it takes days, weeks, months or even years to find new stable accommodation. Once landlords turn to tenants and squatters. The owners of profitable businesses are forced to hawk on the streets. Families are separated, forced to place their children in different places while the parents seek work where they can. Children have no means to continue their schooling. Mental and physical health suffers.
“The tragedy of this particular instance, however, is set against the successive forced eviction of different communities across Oworonshoki – and other parts of Lagos – since 2023. In fact, the year 2023, just a month after the current Lagos State Governor and President were sworn in, marked a massive uptick in forced evictions, starting with the forced eviction of Oworonshoki communities that had been included in the initial planning for the Kosofe Model City Plan, and continuing with the demolition of Orisunmibare in Apapa in February 2024, Otto communities in March 2024, and Oko Baba and parts of Aiyetoro communities in September 2024, and the tragic demolition of Ilaje Otumara, Baba Ijora and neighboring areas in March 2025. In September 2025, a fresh spate of evictions commenced in Oworonshoki in Ebute Kekere community, neighboring Precious Seed, and has continued at the Berger area of Oworonshoki, and just earlier this week violent demolitions by arson at Lone Street in Mosafejo/Idi Araba areas of Oworonshoki.
“Like the current forced eviction of Precious Seed, these forced evictions evidence the recapturing of the machinery government by an oligarchy of powerful land-owning families and corrupt private developers around the state. Much worse, the current forced eviction at Precious Seed continues the trend of total disregard for rule of law and persistent violation of court orders.
“We condemn the ongoing forced eviction in no uncertain terms; and we call on the Lagos State Government and the Federal Government that stands behind to heed this warning – which can lead nowhere good – and reverse course on a dangerous trend and immediately halt of the forced eviction of Precious Seed community and commence rebuilding the illegally demolished homes.
“We, the residents of informal settlements and partner civil society organisations, stand with the people of Precious Seed community – and other recently demolished areas of Oworonshoki – to decry the Lagos State Government’s mass forced eviction of well over 3,000 people without notice, consultation, or resettlement and in violation of subsisting court orders.”