Lockdown: “We Now Sleep Outside”, Homeless Lagosians Narrate Ordeals

With the lockdown in Lagos, BBC reports that residents of Abule Ado and victims of gas cylinders explosion are bearing the harder brunt.

According to the same media, they have been sleeping outside or in crowded spaces since they lost their houses to the fire.

The case of Peace Dim wrenches the heart. A mother of two, she said that she has been staying in a jampacked place with other victims of the incident.

In that kind of situation, any kind of social distancing as advised by WHO is not even possible. In speaking with the BBC, she described their situation in great detail.

“In this house now, we have three married men whose wives are squatting elsewhere, two bachelors, a spinster, including myself, my children and a friend’s child. The son of the man who owns the house is also here,” she said.

Of great desolation is the story of Joseph Ojuwku, a landlord of six apartments and six shops blocks whose fortune reversed and now squats in a friend’s house.

He said he had to send his family back to the village so that he does not put undue pressure on his friend’s accommodation.