Thirty-five years ago in mid-July, bulldozers demolished the homes, hopes and aspirations of over 300,000 people in the low income community of Maroko, in Lagos, Nigeria. This remains Nigeria's biggest forced eviction to date - the complete annihilation of about 30 neighbourhoods at one time.

The evictions were framed as an attempt to improve people's living conditions and minimise exposure to flooding. But hundreds of thousands of people were left homeless.

A new film, Displaced - A City's Scars, documents how communities in Lagos have suffered a century of evictions, which continue today through a new wave of gentrification.

The film highlights how, even in 1990, Maroko's experience was not uncommon. Between 1973 and 2024, there were 91 eviction exercises in Lagos. Some communities suffered repeated evictions and more than two million people were affected directly.

Since 2000, community markets have also been destroyed. Huge markets selling household goods, spare parts for cars and chemicals to buyers from neighbouring countries were demolished too. In the first six months of 2025 alone, more than 10,000 people were evicted from a waterfront area that's been targeted for an upmarket, luxury housing development.

Lagos covers almost 1,000 square kilometres, with a population of just under 16 million. Dozens of new luxury housing developments are being erected with prices of close to US$2,000 per square metre. Forced evictions to make way for these developments are usually state supported and conducted by dozens of armed security forces, but are framed as a necessary part of urban development. The people who are displaced are those who don't earn much and whose housing and other needs were never planned for.

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As an urban management and governance researcher, I've spent the last 26 years investigating social complexities, urban realities and the quest for spatial justice in African cities.

I'm also part of a team of researchers mapping evictions over the last 100 years. We've found that sites of evictions often become new enclaves for the city's elite. Malls replace local markets.

I believe there is much that society can still learn from the 1990 Maroko evictions, given that the people affected were never properly compensated, and unjust forced displacements have continued in Lagos ever since.

From the 1850s, when Britain ruled Nigeria as a colony, until the country's independence in 1960, the state apparatus was regularly sent out to enforce socio-spatial inequality in Lagos, evicting local people to create segregated whites-only areas, known as European quarters.

By 1872, Lagos had a total population of over 60,000 people. Fewer than 100 were of European origin, yet the colonial administration created a separate enclave for them. Evictions continued in Lagos through the colonial period and continue today, with dozens of mass evictions having happened in the post-colonial era.

The government has justified the evictions for health and sanitation, and safety and security reasons: the same reasons given to justify evictions during the colonial era. Yet the government did not provide sufficient sanitation in many places in the city, and residents evicted for these reasons were never resettled anywhere safer or healthier.

The Maroko people were evicted in 1990 to make way for Victoria Island Extension and Oniru Estate. The only thing that tells us that Maroko once existed as a vibrant community is the Maroko Police Station.

Evictions have continued to take place without adequate compensation or resettlement for those evicted. People earning low incomes, as those evicted from Maroko were, were evicted even when they had valid title deeds. Their houses were demolished with all their belongings and assets still inside. Families became fractured, people died and many lost their livelihoods, schooling and jobs because of the evictions.

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People also lose their history when they're evicted. Places are renamed, affecting the social and material histories of the city and its residents. Memories and tangible attachments to places are destroyed.

Other places have also been erased. For example, the only relic of Lagos Bar beach - a natural heritage asset and preferred public space enjoyed by generations of Lagosians until the early 2000s - is a bus stop at the gate of Eko Atlantic city. This is a private new city that appropriated the beach for its inhabitants.

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The trauma of forcible removals is inter-generational. For communities that dare to push back, the quest for justice can transcend generations. The Maroko community filed a petition before the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights in 2008, leading to the commission condemning forced evictions and calling on member states to end evictions carried out for the sake of development.

But the Lagos State government is notorious for ignoring court orders that prohibit forced evictions. A 2025 judgement from the Ecowas Community Court of Justice which ordered the Nigerian government to pay compensation to eviction victims in Lagos and Port Harcourt has been ignored.

Spatial injustice often goes hand in hand with ambitious transformation plans of any city. This is problematic. There has to be a better way of developing cities like Lagos without carrying out violent evictions.

The government must recognise that all residents have a right to the city. As the United Nations agency to support city improvements, UN Habitat says, this is:

the right of all inhabitants, present and future, to occupy, use and produce just, inclusive and sustainable cities, defined as a common good essential to the quality of life.

In practical terms, this means respect for the dignity of urban residents from all walks of life, whether they rent or own land. If land is to be appropriated, residents must be consulted, compensated and resettled. Forced, disruptive and violent evictions should be stopped, and recognised as a demonstration of the coloniser's practices of exclusion.

Read more: Lagos city planning has a history of excluding residents: it's happening again

Secondly, urban planning needs to be more inclusive. Lagos must create spaces for multi-income classes (rich and impoverished people living together) and cease the practice of creating separate areas (socio-economic enclaving) that currently exists.

Finally, cities are places of social and structural identity. Urban memorials are needed to tell the full story of places and people's experiences, no matter how painful.