Environmental Rights Action, Lagos. Oluwafemi Akinbode and Philip Jakpor, 24/07/18, 1:45pm.In-person interview, recorded.

Interviewer - Halima HarunaParticipant 1 - Akinbode OluwafemiParticipant 2 - Philip Jakpor

Interviewer: “Can I now, sorry I’m going to now ask kind of specific questions about the projects I’m looking at like, specifically. Are you, just to begin, are you involved with the Ibeju-Lekki communities directly?”

Participant 1: We worked up to a point.

Participant 2: The EPZ one? Yeah, we have done some prospecting in the area… We’ve seen the massive… constructions going on, creating a whole new city. We’ve done some work along the (P1: Eko Atlantic) corridor of the Atlantic… that’s this Alpha Beach, former Alpha Beach which is no longer there… Jakonde area because of the floodings as a result of those projects. So we’ve done, so those levels of engagement we’ve already had them and those people (inaudible)~

P1: But not like specifically on the EPZ, yeah.

I: I’m not sure, this acronym “EPZ”, I’m not familiar with what that is, I don’t know if you’re referring to the free trade zone…

P1: The free trade zone, yeah. Yeah, okay, that’s what you call it.

I: So, that’s really interesting to me because that’s what I’ve been doing, primarily set my research on. What has been most fascinating to me is the collaboration, I guess, between Chinese state powers and.., I mean I say Chinese state powers but also private powers as well as Lagos state government-

P1: But it’s a trend, that doesn’t really mean we don’t know what’s going on and there is a trend. We could basically say is that we’ve not really come out as a targeted campaign on the EPZ or free trade zone, that’s just the thing, but we know exactly what’s going on. We know the racket as you say in Nigeria, we know the scam involved, yeah.

P2: And the way they bulldoze their way into the communities-

P1: (inaudible) and the community issues. Of course the environmental concern too-

P2: And like he also said, you see, some of the things happening in that area could also be very very responsible for the level of flooding you are seeing (P1: it’s not only there-) along the -

P1: -It’s even up to the coastline, up to Aiyetoro that is sinking, in Ondo state, yes. So the sand-filling in Lagos is causing coastline problems up to, across to several other states. So I mean, we’ve raised an alarm on some of these issues (P2: we’ll eventually go to Aiyetoro) yes, exactly and Lagos state government doesn’t like us anyway.

I: Sorry, I don’t know why I laughed. The thing.. I know that there was this process that, some of the community went through in 2006 when I think, they went to court with SERAC for compensation of land and so I wanted to ask what, from your own side, especially since you’re working from the perspective of environmental change and… the effect on the climatic nature of their livelihood and so on. So I want to ask, what are the tools that you’ve used to liase with these communities like workshops and seminars, but are the tools that you use?

P1: Let me just tell you; we’re designing a holistic program holistically for the oil, for the extractive industry around Lagos and it’s not only the EPZ zone, it covers Alaruyo Oil (P2: and up to Badagry). So if the E- whatever you people call it, is Dangote. And Alaruyo has his own something something, I don’t know the name… So the biggest problem for us as environmentalists is that there is a craze to get oil and to refine crude in Lagos. And the underlying factor of the entire thing, the so called business, the ideologues of business in Lagos today are extremely capitalist in nature. So what they do (interruption as someone opens the office door), what they do, unfortunately, is to use state resources to boost their so called foreign capital, they socialise the cost of doing business and they privatise the profit. And again, at the expense of the environment. Now, the problem, the truth is we’ve concentrated so much on the Niger Delta, so usually before we kick-start campaigns, we do a whole lot of studies and SERAC has been working in that area. So you look at the EPZ itself; as I’m talking to you, this project that, the projects going on there, they are fraught with a lot of irregularities. Which we’re doing our surveys. And the key one is the environmental impact assessment.

I: Which they haven’t released right?

P1: They have not even done it. So the project itself is illegal. It’s not supposed to start, because we don’t have, nobody has given us adequate impact assessment, you don’t only do the impact assessment, the impact assessment itself is not an event, it’s a process. For which, when you discover that when we’re sand-filling in Ibeju-Lekki, it’s going to cause flooding around the other zones of Lekki. So you have to put safeguards which is called remediation, so what remediation measures are they putting in place? None. Very crucial is the issue of the communities and their livelihoods. Land is not just land, you know. Land is a source of livelihood, land is, you also have the cultural attachment to land. So how do you sit down in Abuja and then you take over the lands of people in Ibeju-Lekki? And you don’t even give them that power to be able to negotiate and (audible) SERAC is doing a good job on that, and so it’s a huge question that needs to be answered as that kind and mode of development is happening. We are also looking at the long-term effects, in terms of marine pollution, in terms of spills. We’ve seen what has happened in the Niger Delta, what are the safeguards? Lagos state as of today, does not even have a ministry of petroleum resources, not yet. So they rely on archaic laws of the federal government. So what we are trying to do is to engage Lagos state government, first in terms of policy and

regulation, that itself is why we are involved in the Akoka-Total issue. So here is Total operating in Lagos and they spill petrol into about 500 homes and then they now have to rely on the federal government DPI. We say look, this structure, this is not right. These are citizens of Lagos state, as the state government, you have to stand up and defend them. Similarly, we are now saying that development as they are marketing it, hyping it, is nice. But look, as a state you have a responsibility to your, to the people of Lagos state. And that’s the kind of way, and of course, to give voices to the people. But unfortunately, I must say, they’ve not been cooperating with us. Yeah, that’s the model of engagement we want to evolve in Lagos. Because if we’re not very careful, you will see a replica of the Niger Delta in Lagos, and it’s happening already. I said, we’ve worked on Atlas Cove, Atlas Cove used to be where we used to have spills. Today, Atlas Cove, I mean several people were killed in Atlas Cove. Today in Lagos, overnight for 48 hours, they were trying to remove tankers, why? Because tankers indiscriminately- so far you have your money and your license from Abuja, who cares? Buy houses, you turn it into a tank farm in Lagos. We are beginning to now situate some of these problems within this Lagos locale so that we can see how we can specially address them. That’s the way, that’s why I must say that we have not really focused on, the only area that we have focused on basically to kick-start in Lagos state is the water campaign, which is something different.We are developing Lagos extractive industry campaign which is going to focus on the craze and the madness. Lagos state is so mad now, for oil. They are so rich and I think maybe they want to beat California in terms of wealth. I wish them best of luck but it has to be done within a module that is sustainable, where the environment is protected and where livelihoods are also protected.

I: Thank you so much… that was really helpful. So, I still have a couple of questions that I want to ask-

P1: Yes, yes. It may not be relevant but I’m just telling you the context at which-

I: No, no, it’s really helpful. So, like with the little understanding that I have, I see the, the kind of, the actors in these situations usually tend to be the state and the private powers which are more or less the same, then the-

P2: The people- (P1: People)

I: And then civil society. (P1: Civil society) Right. So for me, like I think there tends to be like this atmosphere of, of what you can call socio-environmental factors that also influence the situations at hand. These are factors and influences, presences that we don’t necessarily, they’re not tangible, they’re not things that we can point at. So what I’m referring to, I mean things like ancestral tradition, you also talked about cultural attachment, and I’m interested in the, in the role that those factors that are not quite necessarily physical and the, the influence that they have also on these particular situations, because I think that there’s a way that they can be, they can be modelled, that they can be instrumentalized quite similarly to what capital does, because there’s a way that capital acts and capital can act the way it does because we can’t see it. It is like an intangible kind of wealth that is, that proliferates everybody’s day to day

life. So I want to ask now about like, what..do you think there’s a..that there’s social or cultural factors that are at play here? Like, things that undulating underneath this situation?

P1: Well, if you look at the- (interruption by colleague) Well, in this case, I know probably you’ve studied the conflicts regarding the free trade zone, so you could see that there are even cultural factors and those people are saying like, this is our land, you see my ancestral families are there and this and that. And then the Lagos state, somebody even got shot, somebody got shot you know. So it’s very, it’s very tough. And even as at now, you know, nobody could say precisely what is going to be the next step by the community. They’re trying to, you know, use divide and rule and all sort of things… We were, we were somehow, we were involved at a point. But the fundamental issue in development is actually consultation. See, this is why they always get it wrong. Look, you’re coming, signed agreement in Abuja, I’m sorry i’m referring to water, we did, we did reconnaissance, before we go to communities, we go there. So we went to Epe community, they went to the World Bank and I was in D.C., and they’ve published it in… Global Article, that they’re doing Olokola, Olokola (P2: And D.O. 2 and 3), Olokola, singular millions of projects, of dollars. Water infrastructure. We were there. There’s nothing on the ground. The community don’t even know. They were, when we got there, we said “where’s Olokola?”, they said “this is Olokola.” No one. So one day, once a bank or somebody got the money, you move in earthmovers and you begin to chase them. I think the.. That cultural responsibility, that you don’t shave a man’s head in his absence must come to play in our development narrative or else, we will continue to have this conflict. Let my people tell you “we need refinery”, let my people tell you “no, it’s not refinery that we need, it is actually bus stop.” And then the issue of ownership is easier, alright? The issue of stakeholdership is easier. But when you take decisions completely above the people who are, you know, if they’re natural owners of these communities, they have cultural attachment to these communities, they’ve lived in these communities, their livelihoods depend on just those little things that you think are little. But they’re not, because that’s their life.. There’s just no way, it’s consultation. And mutual respect.

P2: I’ll corroborate what he has just said with, I think what was the first..field work.. I think you (“you” refers to P1) sent me, that was in 2007. We had these massive pipes everywhere across Lagos. And-

P1: You should to monitor that one that time.

P2: And I think it’s-

P1: And people don’t even know!

P2: People don’t, yeah exactly, and when we went..even at Maryland here, most people..you know you have these big, huge pipes, just in front of them..which will freight gas. And most people we (P1: inaudible) were asking were like “okay, it’s water.”

P1: Yeah, I remember. When they were doing that Oando project.

P2: Exactly. I’ve forgotten the name, that was in 2007. So, every community or along the right of way- (P1: Don’t even know what the pipe lays there) felt it was water.

P1: Whereas it was a gas pipeline.

P2: It was a gas pipeline. There’s one company, I’ve forgotten the name-

P1: No they contracted it to one, I can’t remember, but it was Oando that was there. (P2: Exactly.)

P2: And just in front of them. They were thinking “it’s water.” So, then somebody can just actually want to burst the pipe and get water, not knowing that it’s actually gas. And you have this kind of.. So that corroborates what he has just said about- (P1: TRANSPARENCY!)

P2: No consultation with communities, that is the bane of development.

I: So the other… the other question I want to ask is..this is from my… a small question, maybe referring to the Niger Delta and also to, I guess the urban development in slums in Lagos. So I know that the state and federal government very often, they use, they employ the...social ills, like insecurity in the state as an excuse to..evacuate and demolish particular slums. But also use it as a way of..the way that they are managing the..situation with Niger Delta and with the communities, is using..concepts around security and using concepts around..the fact that these people are..that that land is somehow for the greater good and the project is for everybody’s benefit. And they use that to impede (note: vocabulary used here should be “mete out”) a particular kind of injustice on a smaller community. The example I wanted to give, that I’ve been using is the Lagos to Ibadan light railway that they want to..even though that’s part of the master-plan of Lagos, I know that they’re going to have to demolish a lot of communities that are along the way of this planned light railway. That planned light railway has been touted as beneficial to like the general populace, at least to this part of Nigeria. People travel between Lagos and Ibadan often, but at the same time, there are still pockets of, there are still small communities that will have to..give way for this thing that’s supposed to benefit the greater good. So I’m wondering, how do you then manage it when you’re faced with these kind of …

P1: Well, let me tell you that there are so many unresolved questions, which is number one. Does the state exist for the people or do the people exist for the state? Number one. Number two, which security? Is it the security of the people or the security of people in power? In fact, what manner of security? (P2: laughs) And then who defines the greater good? These are the issues, these are the conflicts that we have to, all the time, beat and resolve, alright? So people do exist in their community, they’re not fighting, hundred days, then you suddenly came and say that it constitutes security threat. Threat to who? Threat to themselves? Or threat to the power of the gangs, or threat to corporates? Again, is it if there’s a security breach or security issue that- it is the responsibility of the state to make that place secure. And so the next thing you then say is that..you don’t cut off the head because you are having headache. So demolition is

not..evacuation is not the answer to security in the community, it’s just lame excuses and they are no longer acceptable in modern times. And then, they will remain unacceptable…look, in our side, they’ll say “you give a dog a bad name to hang him”- (P2: inaudible). Any time the government can no longer manufacture excuses and lies, security becomes the easiest one that they use to evacuate people. And..it’s so sad honestly, that these things continue to happen..as I’m talking to you, in Lagos alone as at today, there are about close to 36 demolition points- (P2: Yeah.) Today. Where people are being displaced, they’re not..compensated, they are not rehabilitated, they’re just left there. As citizens of this country. I think the government itself is there to cater for the citizens of this country, right? But we seem to have a government now that… seems to be 100% on the side of capital, against its own people. So that is not acceptable and I think the security of the people should be paramount, the lives of our people should take precedence over the so-called corporate influx that is happening. Look, the importance of environmental impact assessment is to look at the whole gamut of all this impact and how to mitigate them. There are some, if you cannot remediate you can compensate, the problem is because some of these projects are government projects; they do not even follow due process. And so you have..then the people will then demand for their rights, and then they will take soldiers against them and have forced evacuation, repression, and you have people getting killed. So that’s completely not the model.. I think that development should evolve from the people. The kind of development that people wanted, not to come and force development, what you call development on them. It has to be participatory. It has to be all-inclusive. People must have a say in the kind of development that they want. And when they have a say..I use a very very dirty example when this thing happened. People will tell you “oh, security problem in Nigeria! Have you ever seen- (question posed to I: you’re a Nigerian? I: Yes.) Do you know what is called NEPA (National Electric Power Authority) transformer? Now, you see the transformer everywhere, sometimes NEPA doesn’t give electricity for six months. Have you ever seen policeman gather around a transformer? Have you ever asked yourself why is that people don’t get angry and go and burn transformer?.. Because they think that that machine, one day, will bring value to their lives. So they have hope, that this transformer is to bring electricity to my house. Hope!

P2: And they protect it.

P1: The problem we are having is that people are not convinced that the model of development that we have today… it’s parasitic, it’s still taking away from the people. And it’s not contributing to the people. And so there is no sense of stakeholdership.

P2: A pipeline passes the back- (P1: inaudible) and they do not benefit from it. So they feel the best thing is to vandalize it.

P1: I have to deliver a talk somewhere on people’s base security, and that’s what I give. Why is that we don’t have policemen guarding NEPA? As lousy as that corporation is..it is because there is a connection between NEPA succeeding and the lives of the people. That shows that you must give..there should be nexus between if you are in a community..the community

people, right from your day of entering that community, they should know that this will bring value, quality to the life I’m living. This is where we have to return to.

I: Thank you. So, the last question that I have no is..what roles do you think other civic parties that are non-governmental, the church for example, it acts as a social facilitator in a lot of these communities where they do not have the typical amenities like shelter and so on, especially with seasonal changes and flooding.. So I’ve been wondering what roles do they play in situations? When you are going to a particular community and you find that there’s already a civic presence that’s non-governmental, already doing a work of social facilitation, how do you work in tandem with them and do they even sometimes end up being antagonistic to the kind of progress that you are looking to achieve- (P1: Well..) I mean just generally..

P1: I think it’s not only the church, I think even in civil societies..our own model..I told you that we were working on Otodo Gbame before, we seded it out. So sometimes, we break some campaigns and you have some other things, and we know that you are doing great work, we collaborate with them. We strengthen, we even have activity even in Makoko tomorrow. So another set of group, she (a former researcher now working in the Makoko area mentioned in an unrecorded part of the interview) left from here and we’ve been encouraging her to do work. So I think we should be able to use synergy to be able to collaborate. For me, I think the church has more than even been providing services. Why? Culturally, we are religious people.

P2 and I: Yeah.

P1: Both non-state actors and state actors find themselves in either one church or a mosque. I think both, all religion in this world preaches social justice. So it is the responsibility of whoever presides in all these religious outreach to take that message of social justice, equity, fairness, accountability and transparency to all their members. That’s number 1. Number 2 is also that the church, because they reach the grassroots, have a role and there’s no denying that fact. They’ve been doing that since the pre-independence days and they’ll still continue to do that. I think they can continue to do that -(inaudible)- We work with churches also in Environmental Rights Action, working with JPDC, working with..who is it? (P2: inaudible) Trying to talk to Baptist Convention, actually we are working with the.. (P2: Baptist Convention)

P1: So basically our society is extremely religious and we also believe that we could use that structure to be able to influence policy, to be able to talk to policymakers. And even also to change personal behaviour because, people.. It’s about state and non-state behaviour, that we are trying to change. (I: Yeah) So that’s just..and if you study even the evolution of Nigeria’s democracy, you find out that there’s been room for the church right from pre-independence days, through the democratic struggle and even now that we have, what they call..is it demo-crazy you have now? (P2: laughs) Civil rule, whatever. There is a role for the church to be able to ensure that, there is a danger that even what we fought for and we got partially through the government structure should not be taken over by non-state actors that are more powerful than citizens. And that is the current conflict today. They’re coming with state capital, taking over a

large chunk of our land with a set of people and the local communities will have little or nothing to say about it. So the church also has a role in terms of bringing social justice..to our people.

I: I mentioned the church because personally I’m curious about what the other parts of the situation that tend to be..that are often excluded from the larger discussion around..what we’ve been discussing on social justice and social policy. I don’t necessarily..it’s not essential but I want to ask about how you’ve been working with the communities in the Niger Delta and what you foresee for the progress of that?

P1 and P2: (sigh)

P1: I think I started this like 1999, I can’t calculate..almost twenty years ago. Well, let me tell you that..for me, there’s been some level of progress. Frankly. But we still have a long way to go. The issue about Nigeria has to do with even our corporate existence..the structure of government we are running and..how people control resources. These are issues...not even issue of tokenism and I just started..I will come back to that ownership and stakeholdership. Look, there is no way you’ll come and take my land and make me hewers of stone and I’ll be satisfied. We just must go back to how to genuinely make Niger Delta communities stakeholders in the oil business. That’s just the way.. That’s the way to the future. Yes, today, what is happening is that the federal government called the militants..in fact, they bribed them. That’s..Amnesty is bribery. And so you bribe them, pay them off so that they don’t go and burst the pipeline but is that sustainable? Is that progress? So it’s not. Yeah, we’ve seen pockets of improvement in policies on environment but they’re not well-enforced, Oboni cleanup is not going on, it’s more of a hype, okay? So people will continue to organise, it’s a cycle. You can see that cycle of violence erupt again anytime soon. I’m not prophesying but it’s possible, so there are fundamentals...Land Use Act, it’s the most unjust laws in the world. All land belongs to government and we are Africans, that land does not belong to government. Who is government?

P2: (laughs)

P1: Thank you.

Lekki Port, Lagos. Steven Heukelom, 17/08/18, 4:00pm, via WhatsApp. Recorded.

Interviewer - Halima HarunaParticipant - Steven Heukolem

Participant: So finally we speak.

Interviewer: Yeah, finally (laughs)

Participant: Where are you now?

Interviewer: Right now? I’m in London. I’m in school… at Goldsmiths, yeah.

P: You’re at school right now?

I: Yeah, right now. I’m at the library, to conduct the interview.

P: Ah, okay.

I: Mhm.

P: It’s late, isn’t it?

I: Ah, no, it’s just...it’s the afternoon here.

P: Yeah, but you’re… what is it? Five-thirty.

I: Oh, no, it’s four-thirty, it’s the same time as it is in Nigeria right now.

P: Oh really?

I: Yeah, it’s.. It doesn’t-

P: Oh yeah you’re right, it’s because I’m coming from Holland, they’re one hour ahead. So it’s the same time, okay. Okay, so please tell me.. What are you doing? What are you looking for?

I: Okay-

P: I’ll see how I can answer your questions.

I: Of course, so..I am conducting a research dissertation project on..the construction of large scale residential and infrastructural projects in Lagos. I’m looking at this through the lens of urban renewal and also, through the lens of..the environmental effects of construction and some ideas around urban hazards. That’s primarily what I’m working on.

P: Okay.

I: So, I’m just going to ask a few questions basically about the construction of the port, particularly the dredging practice-

P: Yes.

I: I’ll probably ask also about..where the port fits into the general complex of the Lekki and Lagos Free Trade Zones. And also about some of the work that Tolaram Group has been doing, then finally on..management practices once the port has been completed.

P: Okay.

I: So yeah-(P: Okay.) that’s what I’m looking for.

P: Just shoot ahead.

I: Okay-

P: Have you seen our website?

I: Yeah, I have seen the website actually.

P: Okay, great. (I: I’ve seen the website) And there’s also a site of Lekki Free Trade Zone.

I: I’ve also seen that as well.

P: Okay. Great.

I: So, the questions that I did, I’m just going to kind of begin, just in a second..I should also say that..I can keep this interview confidential if that would make it, if that would make you a bit more comfortable, and also..the interview usually takes about a half hour to forty minutes, never much longer than that. (P: Okay-) And I’ll..you have my email address, but you can also get back to me after the interview, if there’s any questions that you have. So before we start, do you have any questions for me?

P: No, please go ahead. And about confidentiality..I think most of the things I will tell you is just public information..about the project. So I don’t think there is an issue with that.

I: Yeah, that’s fine. (P: If there is, I’ll let you know.) Yeah, no problem. Fine, thank you. So, my first question is about..Tolaram Group. Tolaram Group have been present in the Nigerian domestic market since the late 70s. So having amassed great capital from the domestic market, from the Nigerian domestic market, how does the group plan to use the deep sea port under construction to infuse that same capital back into the Nigerian market/

P: ..Well, I think the key..the key mechanism that we have here is jobs. (I: Okay.) This is one, and..jobs maybe not so much directly on the port but definitely, let’s say in the market if you have a factory and you’re not able to grow in the Nigerian market because of logistics, the port will enable those businesses to go after their expansion because the logistics will be in a better shape once we open. So in a sense, we are creating a lot of options for Nigeria, and of course that’s the (inaudible), there’s many ways that we will support the economy in general.

I: Okay. So how is the whole company and the consortium that are basically under, that are more or less the main stakeholders of the Lekki Free Trade Zone, how is the Lekki World Holding company and the consortium, how are they managing their relationship with the state government that also has a position as stakeholder? And what does that-

P: Tolaram Group right?

I: I mean, Tolaram but I also mean..your relationship with Lekki Worldwide, and then also what your relationship is with the state government, and you’re..managing the different stakeholders that you have here and what your position is.

P: Yes. Okay..we have a, you might have come across that information, NPA the Nigerian Port Authority is a 5% shareholder in the Port. (I: Okay) Lagos state is a shareholder of 20%, so..basically we bought the land from the government and..in return they have a share of 20% so that is our relation with our shareholders. We are currently, this might be a bit sensitive but..this is not with Nigeria, working with China Harbour, a (inaudible) company with our contractor for them to be the shareholder within the project as well. So those are the main players and we are talking about the Port only here, the Lekki Free Trade Zone is 100% owned by Tolaram (I: Yeah, okay.) So the port is within the Free Zone, so we lease the land for the port from the Free Zone. That’s how that works, very simple. Now, the government of Nigeria, the relation we have with them is with NPA and the Ministry of Transport. (I: Okay.) So, basically the boss of the NPA is the minister of transport, so of course we have a close relation with the minister of transport..because the concession for the port we get that from NPA, the Nigerian Port Authority. So they give the concession to us, they give the right for.. We get the land from the state of Lagos to build a port, to operate the port and to..and after 45 years, the duration of the concession, after 45 years we will hand it over to NPA. And we..45 years, so what they call...a BOT construction, build, operate and transfer after 45 years, that is the concession. During that period, we or actually the port company let’s say, has the right to economically get the benefits right? So what we do is, we have for instance, certain concession agreements with a container terminal operator, somebody like AP&T, like MAERSK, and they are our operator and we have a sublease agreement with them. So basically the location where the terminal will be, that piece of land not the whole port, but only the land to build the container terminal we sublease that out to someone else and of course, we make money out of that. That is also part of our business.

I: Okay.

P: We have that right to do so, but during those 45 years.

I: Yeah, okay. I… need to ask a question also about-

P: Sorry, one thing. One more, just to round it off, is you’re asking how we maintain the relations, we have here a Lagos company that is what we call a relationship team. It’s a couple

of people, three, four people that are..focusing on the relations with NPA, of course the ministry but there’s many more..ministries, ministry of finance, ministry of justice…all kinds of other institutions in Nigeria that give out permits for the…for so many things. Construction, we have like 30 permits for the whole port project. We already have them identified, most of them we actually have, some of them we have waivers for, so we need to keep in touch with all these institutions to… be on the right foot, to be on the good foot with them. Because..that’s what you need to do, to do a project like this. That’s how we keep things in sync.

I: Thank you very much. I would like to ask now about two things that you’ve mentioned in your previous answer. First, can I get the details of the relationship you have with the Chinese construction company that you mentioned? I’m not sure that I caught the name.. And I would like to understand..are they going to be working alongside you in..construction of the necessary utilities and facilities-

P: They are, China Harbour, an engineering company, that at the moment, is our contractor.

I: Okay.

P: So the whole port project basically is a (inaudible) project, all the marine infrastructure, the landside infrastructure, all the stuff you need for, all the roads, all the rail, all the buildings, all the fence, walls around the perimeter, all the equipment, all the terminal..all the systems, all the communication, all these things, tuck box for the marine services, all of that, everything, the project will provide that. It’s a turnkey project. And China Harbour, is the only contractor we have, everything is..(inaudible) the contract we have with them, that’s for the equipment. It is something that we will deal with separately as we move forward with the construction.

I: Okay, alright..thank you. I also would like to find out..you said that Tolaram Group is the owner of the Lekki Free Trade Zone? (P: Yes) So I ask this because there, I want to be sure, are you referring to the free trade zone that is currently under construction by the Ibeju-Lekki axis?

P: Okay, there is two free zones basically. (I: Ah, yes.) Well, actually there is three. If I am capturing everything fully. There is the Lagos free trade zone (LFTZ), that is us, 900 hectares, if I’m correct. And there is another free zone, the Lekki free zone. I always say they don’t have trade. Yeah, I always say they don’t have any trade (laughs). So it’s a Lekki free zone, and it’s the Lagos free trade zone. The free zone is a joint venture between the Nigerian government and China. I think it’s a 50/50 percent venture, where the Nigerian part is being represented by Lekki Worldwide, Lekki Worldwide is a name that you might have come across. It’s basically the government (inaudible), set up by Nigeria, to represent Nigeria within the joint venture of that Lekki Free Zone. (I: Okay.) ..They, their area is 23000 hectares, I’m not sure what is the latest status but..rough magnitude order is 50000 hectares, maybe 2 and a half, I’m not really sure but you might be able to look that up on their website. And actually there is a third one, that actually nobody speaks of and that is..basically it’s Lekki (inaudible) or..people say Dangote free zone. It’s not an official name, but what happened is that they wanted to build this refinery, it’s a very very big project, one of the biggest refineries in the world, first on that scale in Nigeria, another

national project let’s say. He wanted to..build his refinery let’s say..in the neighbouring land of where, you have the port and then Lagos trade zone, on the back side, more to the land, that piece of land which originally was part of the Lekki Free zone. So he took 2000 ha. from that and actually what I understood was that it’s not formed under the..so he has his own.. There’s three different main areas.

I: Yeah, actually, I’ve come across that..the stipulation that there are actually many different companies working on this… on that strip, on that corridor of the Atlantic. I actually, I went to the Lekki Free Zone and I was able to.. gain access to the South-West quadrant. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with that- (P: Yes.) section. So..that’s been of interest to me. So thank you for clearing that up… My third question now is, could you detail the breadth of your community engagement practices and the methods that you use to talk with the community on the effects of the construction practices for the port?

P: Yes… As a big project, we need financing so we go, we are engaging with banks, a group of banks actually.. provide us a loan. Similarly as if you want to buy a house, you go to the bank to get a mortgage. The same is for a project like us, nobody has that...the cash on the table to put into the project so you get a loan, and usually it’s a combination of a number of group of banks that are willing to commit themselves. Now, those are the big international banks like African Development Bank, European Investment Bank, those sort of banks, and you have very stringent requirements. They say, “we are ready to loan you the money’”, they make a commercial deal with you but in the same time, to do that they are ensured we will do the right things within the project. Now, one of the things is the community services. So we have developers, we hired a consultant, and we have developed a whole package. It’s like a very thick document which describes everything, and it’s also the Environmental Social (inaudible) Plan. So it is talking about environment, making sure that we don’t pollute, that we do sustainable, everything that is onsite, those kinds of things, but also our social- how we deal with the communities. For the..our port area is 90 ha. and the Lagos free trade zone is like, 800 or 850. On that land, there were some communities before, so the government, they opened it up and relocated them and then they handed over the land to us for a commercial deal, of course. Those communities are around us, so of course you can imagine that those communities have mixed feelings, although they have been compensated. This is one thing, and..so we try to maximise the engagement with them, so we’ll basically do is.. we have a.. guy, a colleague of mine who speaks with these communities among others but he is the focal point for them. They are meeting with them, with a cross-section of completely, like women, younger people, fishermen, older people, all kinds of - and then we have a regular meeting and then we keep the channels open, keep communicating, see what are their needs, where can we help, of course we cannot- they’ll ask for a lot, we cannot do everything but we try to do the best we can. And there is guidelines from experience all over the world on how to do that and...what is fair enough to do, and one of the most important things, again, it’s jobs. If you give people jobs, the people will have an income. With their own money, they can develop themselves, and next to that, is training. We are in the early stages of the project but our intention is for people- yes, we hire people, but we try to educate and train them so they can.. move up the ladder basically, in terms of jobs and experience and their capabilities.

I: Okay, thank you. I’m so sorry but I would like to clarify something, the Lekki Port is attached to the Lekki Free Zone, or to the Lagos Free Trade Zone. (P: It’s within the Lekki Free Zone.)

P: We lease the 90ha. from the free zone, so the port is inside the free zone.

I: Okay. Yeah, alright then. So my fourth question is, how will securitisation be managed on the port? What procedures and systems are in place for providing security for the port and for the local host communities that you’ve just mentioned?

P: Security is a very interesting..aspect. You have to keep in mind, we’re not a port yet, we’re just a construction site. Not much is happening, there is no ships and port equipment. It is a construction site, and it will remain like this for the coming.. three years.. So, we have our own security detail, security organisation like.. my organisation, the port organisation does. Technical park, administrative, electrical, you have all different expertise, one of the expertise we have is on security. It is a tight perimeter, so there’s a wall and a fence, around the sea and going back to the sea, with two gates, the construction gates and the main visitors’ gate and an access control system. And that’s all very basic, so you have the register and you need to get approval to come inside. That’s how we manage the security and.. we have a weekly meeting to discuss security with the armed police, our security managers, we have incident reports, that’s how we manage the security. And for the security of the community.. I don’t know, they’re on their own. They are outside our..influence. But of course, there is a informal exchange of information about security issues between the communities, us and yeah..because the whole area, frankly.. In Nigeria, it’s logic, it’s like a magnet for all kinds of people that have no business in this area at all. They want to come and do things we don’t want. If you get what I mean. (laughs)

I: Okay, thanks a lot. I would also..or rather, my fifth question will be so.. the macroeconomic impact section on your website, there’s a number of jobs, a quantity of jobs that will be provided by the port for the communities. (P: Yes, yes.) So how will these jobs be protected from unfair labour practices and will they be ensured for the most vulnerable people?

P: What practices you said?

I: Unfair labour practices and will they be (P: Okay, okay.) ensured for the most vulnerable people.

P: Unfair in the sense that others from outside will come inside or..

I: I mean in terms of..getting healthcare, and decent pay, and being able to (P: Okay) have a sense of job security.

P: Yes.. you have to keep in mind that these communities are very.. how do I say that… basic and not really well-developed, the communities also, in terms of education. A lot of people have completely no education, even reading and writing is a problem, they have no skills, most of

them. So it’s not easy to seek employment for them. Through training is not easy because you need to have a certain basic education at lease to be able to..do a course or to help you further on.. So most of the jobs are fairly basic labour jobs, and..driving sometimes is a bit of an issue, because you need a driving license and these things. So don’t… it’s, in my view, it’s quite limited what we can do.. but then again, we do hear from them, we see what can do and that’s what we do. Now..what else did you ask?

I: I asked about these jobs will be ensured for the most vulnerable people because..Lagos is an incredibly place..

P: Yes, one of the things is that we are in talks with the contractor so...we try to, because you can imagine this is all very detailed into the contract but actually not. But we have an agreement with them that they will maximise the local Nigerian labour on their project. If you go to the Middle East or some other project in Africa, you go to the site, you’ll only see Chinese. They’ll just bring in thousands of Chinese to work, from cleaning toilets to...the managers basically. That happens, so.. that in itself is not favourable so..already the initiative to make mind of the Nigerian input, and then also focusing on including the communities, that by itself is already bringing..(inaudible), so that’s already a good step. How to do that, is a discussion with the contractor, China Harbour, and it’s a constant thing, it’s not we made one time an agreement and it will go by itself, no, it’s a constant… constantly it requires our attention. One of the things we have done, is each community, there are six around us, they have a list with potential labour including their skills and their phone number and their name. So we have those lists, and anytime the contractor needs staff, we can go through the list and see.. and contact and to see if they are available because they might have another job at one point, or (inaudible). So those are mechanisms that we try to follow and implement, and it will be on the project, a constant..subject of attention. So we have… to discuss labour- in this general sense. So we address these issues on a daily basis, basically. (I: Okay.) P: I think that’s the most important thing, is to have dialogue.. with communities on these things, with contractors so we try to get arrangements in place, make amendments wherever we can. And that’s working quite well, I have to say…

I: okay, thank you, thanks a lot… So my next question, the construction of the deep sea port requires the dredging of the sea bed, the dredging of the ocean floor. What are some of the details of this process that you can give me? Who’s supervising the procedure and what are its effects on the surrounding environments?

P: This is.. this has a lot to do with the environment? (I: yes) There is..that institution here in Nigeria, which is called.. (I: Is it the NIOMR?) P: NEMASA, yes. NEMASA, they have their own website, and also the Ministry of Environment, they have their own regulations. At the start of the project, we have developed a.. EIA, an environmental assessment (I: Environmental impact assessment?)... EIA, what is the I for? (I: It’s impact.) .. yes, exactly, thank you (laughs). Environmental impact assessment, so we’ve done that, and also this is one of the requirements of the financial institutions that we need to have that and… so we’ve done that. And that’s approved, because the financial institutions, the banks they have their own environmental

consultants so we went through a lengthy process for years with our consultants, with the bank’s consultants, discussing all of this so it’s at a pretty high level, how to take care of the.. I give you just one example. Turtles, they nest here, they’re.. they swim here along the coast of the beach so that has been assessed with actually, how to do with animals within the port and during construction. Because sometimes we.. because our coastline is 1.5km, so that’s the width of the port basically. So we are disturbing that complete beach area, so what we have done is, we have created on a piece of beach which is, let’s say somewhere around a quiet corner of our project, some areas are more busy than others. So we have created- we have identified a beach area, whenever we find a nest of eggs from turtles, we’ll dig them up because they might be in the way, we cannot stop the project because of one nest of turtles, that doesn’t work so you have to see what you can about it. We dig them up, and we put them in that protected area. Centralised. So we put everything together in one smaller area, this is a very common practice to deal with that. I’ve seen that done at another project that worked really well. So..this environmental..impact assessment has many many- it’s whatever, 400, 600 pages document filled all kinds of things. I’ll just give you one example, how it is described, how we need to deal with that. So for the sea bed, of course, this is also an environmental- we have researched it, “is there anything? is there coral? is there rock? is there sea-life? what do we build upon, is there seagrass?” I have done a project where you could see there was a lot of seagrass, a lot of sea-life. So the entrance of the port was going right through that..relatively sensitive area..you can’t do anything about it, you have to go through it. Also with dredging. So what you do is you take your grass, and you relocate it, you plant it in another area to compensate the area that is destroyed. These are the things- luckily we don’t have that here, on this project...because it’s quite basic, quite sandy, it’s a lot of dynamics so..that was not an issue really on this project. Well the thing is, we might have from the dredging, we might have some.. we might have..more clay, it has a high clay content kind of dredging material coming out of the seabed on the land as well. We can’t use it because it’s clay, we can only use good sand also to- to use it for construction. So we need to dump that and about the dumping area, we have agreements that are- there is a certain area, a dumping area, coordinates..identified with the authorities, there is an approval, letters and permits whenever we have dumped material, we can go to that specific area- we make a record of that and then everything is managed in a proper way.

I: Thanks a lot, thank you very much. I would like to ask, is the EIA public?

P:...... I’m not sure. I think so, have you Googled it? To look for it?

I: I haven’t, to be honest

P: Try it, let me know, many times, these documents you can find online.

I: It seems like some of it is actually- okay, yeah, thank you.. I also wanted to ask about the position of the port because- shipping I guess and...logistics and transport by water is, it makes up a really large percentage of the world’s transport network and so I’m wondering how .. this port is to bring the Nigerian domestic market into the global- the global network of shipping and

transport and also, how you… hope to- in bringing the Nigerian ports into the international networks, how do you hope to still be able to ultimately protect the interests of the local population? Is that…?

P: Okay, I can say something about that, we have.. we have a memorandum of agreement, which is more than an MoU, memorandum of agreement is basically we have a contract but not a legal document yet, and let’s say, a document where all commercial agreements are written down and signed by the involved partners which we have with the container terminal operator, and that is CMA. CMA is a French company, you can look that up, they- they are stock market listed so that’s information you can find. You can Google it, definitely find it, Lekki port CMA, (inaudible), so we have that agreement with them and.. I’m not sure if it is mentioned, but it is like common sense that… port operator basically, CMA is one of the- number two shipping line in the world. CMA CGM, from France. So they are- they are one of the biggest shipping lines in the world, they have a division for terminal operations, so they have, I’m not sure about the number, around like 20 to 30 terminals worldwide, something like that. This will be another one and they can..they can arrange- they can manage their ships, if they have a terminal here to take their ships out of Apapa port and put them through the new port, to re-route the ships, this can be done, I mean that is in their power. And of course, once you have a new port with new facility.. which hopefully when it’s ready will function smoothly, will attract also other shipping lines to come there and to bring their ships. It works two ways, one is on the seaside, of course, you will have your ships there but on the land side, your roads need to- physical infrastructure needs to be place. Now, Lagos state is having a.. a Lagos long term vision, masterplan, part of that is a new road network, with new bridges, new roads connecting the different activities in that area and connect them with Lagos, more important, to connect them basically to the North, to connect them to the existing grid of roads within Nigeria. That is important for the transportation companies, so if your road network is in order, also the big customers and the companies in the free zone that have a lot of container trade, they will be very happy on the land side to facilitate the transportation of goods so… if you have your ships on the seaside and the logistics companies and businesses on the land side, then they come together, it’s a transportation knot as they call it. And that should make the system work. Of course, this will take some time for everything to work smooth and you have a sizable market share but as you’re growing, it’s a process. (I: Okay) Is that clear?

I: Yesah, not it is, it is clear. I wanted to also ask about the.. ultimately the.. because I know we’d initially talked about..job security and job assurance for local populations, so I’m wondering now..will the interests, maybe not necessarily, the job positions but will the interests of the local populations be ultimately protected? And what kind of long term forms of dialogue do you hope to have once you are able to have this unfolding masterplan come to play?

P:..... We as a port, because I’m speaking on behalf of the port, we are a relatively small player in the whole scheme. The port project is relatively low labour intensive..there is a free zone of 900ha. from our side, Lagos free trade zone, 900ha. and there is Lekki free zone which is 3000ha., there is a huge refinery with, in the future, all kinds of industries, also petrochemical...and the massive scale of all those developments is huge, so personally I am not

so concerned about the job opportunities for the local communities. We have more than once, we have already now asked people and they can’t deliver because they are working on all kinds of projects. (I: I see.) You have to keep in mind that recently in that area, from Lagos, from Victoria Island to Lekki is 60km, the last 12-15 km is basically the coastline where you, from the expressway you go, down to the beach and then the last 50 km, in that corridor, in recent, let’s say in the last two and a half years, thousands and thousands of people, okay, I think we take… you can compare it with Europe, in terms of immigrants.. that come to your area. It’s the same with us, it’s huge. So many people coming in there, it’s like a magnet because everybody knows this is one of the future, or maybe even the current, economic booming areas in Lagos.

I: I see, okay. That was an interesting moment. (P: Yes.) I-

P: I think actually, the local community they have worried because traditionally they have low level of education so even though there is enough jobs, it might sometimes be difficult for them to find new jobs because their education is limited. So one of our…maybe that’s another interesting aspect..you might be able to Google something on that as well because we have also some announcements done- By the way, you can find us on social media.. on Twitter and, I’m not sure if we have Facebook, but Twitter… and, we have three, Twitter, Instagram there was another one maybe it’s Facebook I’m not sure but you can check that because we have a media consultant who every now and then publishes events that are important for us, one of them is the Tolaram Science challenge as we call it, the TSC, we did that for the 3rd time two months back..invite like 12 schools from the region, the area, round the port and to do one week challenge, they have a team of 10 from each school and they spend.. they do all sorts of things, questions, it’s all prepared, it’s quite a big event actually… it’s a kind of tic tac toe, you know if you have two teams, you put your round or your cross and then at the end of the day there is a winner from two teams (inaudible) and there is a winner, we give prizes, we give textbooks, we have prizes for the smartest student and it’s lifting up the education of the whole schools around us. And even we get feedback from...teachers, parents, it’s so appreciated by the community. So this is a small thing- it’s a big thing actually but for us it’s like a small thing hopefully we will build that into the future, you can have all kinds of ideas if you cooperate with us. Now it is an initiative from us, from the Lekki port.. to show our goodwill.. and many others like Lekki Worldwide, they’re very enthusiastic and they hope to be the host, they have a venue that we have, they want to put money into the prizes and you can think of setting up a school, a university even, these kind of things are possible in Nigeria. So dynamic, and there’s so much growing and there’s so much need. I’m pretty sure that once all these projects develop to a higher level, then that area, there will be a lot of developments in that sense.

I: Okay, thank you, thanks a lot, that was.. very helpful-

P: I have 9% left on my phone so I’m not sure how much I’ll last-

I: No, it’s okay I only actually have one more question-

P: Okay, great-

I: So yeah..the last question is about the flooding crises and the erosion..that kind of Victoria Island towards Lekki corridor that’s especially kind of..impacted by the amount of rainfall that Lagos receives and also the rise in sea level. So there are a few other projects that are on that coastline- (P: Eko Atlantic!) Yeah, Eko Atlantic, and.. I want to find out about your, what your contribution to mitigating those flooding crises and how that has affected the construction of the port and what maybe, if you have any relationship you may have with the Eko Atlantic.

P: We have no relation with Eko Atlantic. To start with, there is no relation at all, it’s not a (inaudible)- we are aware of that, what happened there and...how shall I say this? We know the mechanisms, coastal dynamics..basically meaning if you have a structure like a port or like Eko Atlantic, you’re basically intruding into that system.. then you can have negative consequences. We have- we know that- it is part of natural phenomena..and we are planning..when it comes to that point to mitigate that. One of the things you have to keep in mind is that you dredge a channel, from the port into the deep sea. And that channel will be a catchment area for sand, sand is in suspension by water, sometimes on the beach it’s not clear, it’s sandy so the sand will settle down in the channel. We don’t want that because we want to keep the depth for the ships, otherwise it will be shallower and shallower and the ships cannot enter your port anymore. So you need to do constant dredging from that sand out of your channel. That sand, you can place on the beach, so the beach will keep its natural form and it keeps the supply of sand. And that is the way how to mitigate that, which they have not done in Eko Atlantic. And that’s why you have big problems there.

I: Right, I see. And just to clarify this is the eventual strategy that the port has decided to take in mitigating those problems.

P: Yes.

I: Okay. Alright then, thank you very much, that’s all that I have. It’s been really a pleasure, thank you very much.

P: Yes, I hope you… they were very good questions, you were asking I have to say..so we have of course limited time so I try to explain things the best I can.

SERAC founder, Felix Morka, 31.07.18, 5:05 pm, in-person interview.

Interviewer - Halima HarunaParticipant - Felix Morka

P: 2005, but that was some of the initial engagement, with some of the leaders of the communities who also were individuals and families that were affected by a major forced eviction in 1990 in Maroko, the first eviction, that took place in 1990. So when this project began, the free trade zone, and the government moved in to seize their lands for the zone,

SERAC was contacted by some of these individuals who had become familiar with SERAC because of our involvement with the 1990 case. (I: Ok, I see.)

P: The Maroko community, so basically we got involved to help the community negotiate power with the Lagos state government. In the initial period, the government was not, did not bother to contact the communities over that acquisition. So they moved in, taking land that they had the power to expropriate the land for the free trade zone without reference to the people. So we got involved and began our engagement with the government, and the government itself was unwilling to have a conversation, we were stone-walled, they didn’t respond our initial communication but we didn’t bother, we went about organising the people and basically providing them with awareness of the issues at stake, their rights and also defining the limits of the government’s power to take their land without the due process of law. So it wasn’t long before the communities were brought up to speed, on what their rights were, the necessity to push back on the government’s arbitrariness. So much happened, a lot of media.. a lot of public discussions that we instigated but eventually, it took a meeting that SERAC had in Abuja, at which the- it was an international conference on economic, social and cultural rights and it was convened with a very strong objective to bring the prospective acquisition of the Lekki coastal lands to the public discourse. So we brought in people from around the continent, from the African Commision, legal experts, human rights experts from around the country… to look at Nigeria’s obligations to respect economic and social rights but underlying that was that whole effort to expose what was going on within the free trade zone. Officials of Lagos state government, the Commissioner of Physical Planning was there, so many other directors from the Lagos state government, it was at that meeting that I think, the government made that tactical decision to shift from their stone-walling to engagement, to a conversation. About six months after that conference, we were in fact talking from September until April, we were in this long-drawn negotiations, looking at every piece of the commitment that we wanted the government to make. What they had done was that they had completely acquired the entire area including the ancestral villages of these communities. You get into the sector, the free trade zone district and you find the named villages on one side, facing the Atlantic and the free trade zone is on the left hand side, so what they had done originally was to acquire the entire area but because of this intervention, this negotiation we...basically want to extract a commitment form the government to release from the acquisition of the villages on the right hand side, whereas we were willing to yield the lands, which were substantially the farmlands of these villages on the left hand side. So if you get there now, about 7500 ha. of land was taken, was eventually taken from the community.

I: From the best of my understanding, a lot of those infrastructure projects also involve foreign companies and foreign investors like Chinese state-sponsored construction companies and also with the Chagoury group, they are a Lebanese-Singaporean based group. So I’m now wondering if you think that this factors in any way into the ways that these projects are being handled and it’s not in any way to be particularly essentialist or nationalist about the positions of these companies. Do you think or do you have the perception that because of this, there isn’t a concern per se about the locale as not being from there, that can translate into the exploitative measures that have been taken in those places?

P: No, there’s no question. I think there are two things going on, one is..the failure of regulation, the failure of the government itself to help and observe both national and international standards of thee matters...which then creates the environment for impunity from these companies that they don’t have to necessarily observe the standards that they have in their own countries and in other countries where the laws are viewed with seriousness. So they obviously take advantage of that permissive climate to just focus on profit and..with the culture of patronage, also pay off officials who ought to hold them accountable, they are able to compromise them and actually do what it is they think best for the companies without any care as to the impact on the people. It’s also about the very weak institutions of..democracy that we have, for example, with many of these communities including those impacted by the Eko Atlantic City, will just walk into a court and try to get some remedy from the court but, the companies are aware that the judiciary system.. they are aware that they have the money to pay all the best lawyers and if you go to court, you keep those matters in court for 30 years, and by that time they are completely done- (I: With the projects) with their business, and so even if the court were to make an order, it would barely have the capacity to enforce those orders against them. But it’s also about the..sheer lack of.. the courts and the media as well, those are the two most critical agencies of- (brief interruption) so I’m also talking about the media, that’s also been heavily compromised, cannot even really stand up and champion some of these public interest issues because they also are too quick to go to the project itself and get fat envelopes and just.. what else is going on? So the failure of public scrutiny in terms of media..objectivity and the very weak judicial system we have all make these companies just do as they please. And of course, they are also very ruthless because they have no respect for, whether it’s the culture or the identity or the history or the heritage of the host communities, they don’t really..they simply just see everything as a project site. So whether there are burial sites or traditional religious shrines that they are destroying in the cause of..they don’t care. Once, it’s in the pathway of the project, they think it’s worth destroying and.. in other countries, it’s.. a way to.. it’s the government that should be standing between these investors, they should be the ones protecting those values and ensuring that where there is damage, there is restitution, or remediation but that is not the case here. I know that in, I am part of an international movement pushing to create transnational obligations, so that companies that are operating with Canada, if they come to Nigeria, they should be bound by the same standards that apply in their own countries. So there’s a lot of effort at the U.N. to create some normative category that will impose the transnational obligations on these corporate actors. But for now, I think the experience of people depends on where they are, and what kind of government they have and sometimes civil society, and even civil society is heavily compromised by complete lack of coordination and support so in Nigeria, the civil society has become very weakened, so they either close shop of are forced to become consultants, and who has the money to pay consultants? It’s those people, it’s governments and those actors so when you look at some of those values… and the need for protection of people is not what it should be.

I: Thank you, the other thing that I wanted to ask about that.. it seems that the state and federal governments on both of those levels they often employ the question of particular social ills like insecurity for example so as to displace these communities. An example that I want to give is

the Lagos-Ibadan light railway that is under construction around the Akodo community and i wanted to ask now about the other side of the coin where there is this.. narrative that the free trade zone for example will be a job creator and will be able to, will pump in foreign direct investment into the economy and so on. I’m wondering then what is your take? Because in a particular way, there is… it’s almost like the truth is being occluded from us, where it will create jobs but the jobs are going to be for who, and where does this FDI go into and who does that economy actually benefit? So when you are fielding these kinds of questions from those actors, how do you then relay that to the communities and make them understand that no, actually this supposed zone that’s going to create these jobs, is not actually in service of you. I’m wondering how you navigate that.

P: ..The people who are involved.. either hosting or at the receiving end of some of these projects, they are very knowledgeable. They know that, a lot of the prime jobs that come out of these investments are not jobs that they can ever..be considered for or get by themselves. Many of the communities that are affected are largely lacking in education, their children barely have good schools to attend, whether it’s Ibeju-Lekki or the free trade zone communities or Makoko areas, many of the communities that are often the target of investments, these mega-investments, they are not people whose kids have access to good education, and are able to then come out to compete for those jobs and very often there is no particular offering or extension of guarantees to these communities that these jobs will be reserved in whatever percentage to them. The jobs are available, they are available to the entire population, so there’s nothing special. It’s only in this agreement that I tried to build some elements of guarantees of job creation, contracts, all of the categories of economic activity in terms of the community. It was clearly stated but of course, whether or not they comply with it and to what degree is a different question, at least in my own effort, we did try to control that with the government. But they are aware but… which is why almost always you have this tension between the host communities and the government, whether it’s in the Niger Delta or in some of these new big development sites, it’s the same primary problem, that from the conceptual stages of these projects, they already build in the problems that will explode because nobody really sits down to think about the impact of this project and the need of ensuring that those who bear the greatest cost of exploration, whether it’s oil or this sort of development, must be assured of the benefits over and above that that may be available to the rest of the population. You cannot spew oil in my backyard and destroy my farmland and completely wipe out my existence, and not think it’s important to actually grant me some benefit and when my son who is as qualified as you are comes applying for a job, there is no..frame of reference that allows some accommodation for those who are directly suffering the impact of the profit that you create. And I think that that’s really the bane of these projects, and this happens only because we have a rogue, completely horribly corrupt, insensitive government that is at the federal level, they think of all the things that can possibly benefit these companies and themselves as officials, but for these local people.. I’ll give you an example. The free trade zone we’ve been discussing.. one of the- I told you that..the resettlement land of 750 was to be granted but they’ve only given back 75 for now, the balance is still..being discussed, now when they took 7500ha. of land from us, now they went further down, a few km down to give us 375ha. of land, the resettlement land, this is the land that belongs to the Lekki coastal community citizens. Now,

they went to another community that’s not part of the free trade zone, to acquire the 375ha. that was given to us as resettlement land for this acquisition. Now, the communities from whom they acquired the 375ha., the government has yet to compensate them for that acquisition, with the result that the Lekki coastal communities now are locked in conflict with the local owners, the original owners who are saying “well government may acquire the land but they have a duty to compensate us, until they compensate us, we cannot let you get into that land.” with the result that since 2007, when the MoU was signed, Lekki coastal has not had effective access to- (I: To the resettlement land.) Yes. Now, meanwhile Dangote, Dangote alone..now, forget the companies that have moved in there, Dangote alone… I know how many hundreds of millions of dollars Dangote paid to build and purchase the 2000ha… out of the 7500, Dangote took 2500ha. Now.. with all the money, forget the government’s own budgetary resources, and RGR, all these money that comes into Lagos state every month from internal generated revenue, from within the free trade zone alone, the government had generated immense amounts of money and all it would have taken to compensate those people is just a fragment.. less than 0.001% to pay these people off but you know they won’t do that! Something that basic. Now, about two weeks ago, I was at the governor’s office to warn that.. the place is about to boil, soon this craziness would erupt into a huge public disturbance that will obviously impact the operations in the zone, including discourage prospective investors. And I was also interviewed for long, by the IFC over concessions with (inaudible) probing about the government’s relations with the communities to ensure that it’s a safe investment to the environment and all of the things that ought to be… I said to the president, “yes in the first interview, I qualified all of my comments which if I didn’t qualify them, a lot of the IFC backed loans and… that Dangote and other companies have gotten, may not have in fact gone through.” So I warned that soon all of these bets would be off, and we would then have to go completely full blast, full disclosure so that world will know whether this is a project they should support or not. So as a result of my visit, just last Thursday, the governor had a town meeting with people from the area where he promised that by the end of this week, there would be compensation but we are still waiting to hear that that has started. We are still hoping that they will do that so that it will restore the peace of the… because you.. you take so much from the people, you promise so little and you do so little to fulfill that very little, it’s nothing short of just crass irresponsibility and betrayal of the people who put their faith and their hope and who are also immensely powerless against the government and these powers.

I: Thank you… the other thing that I’m interested in is the.. what particularly baffles me is the processes, the tax incentives hat are being granted to a lot of these companies coming in because the other thing that, if you do any kind of research, you understand that when a lot of these special economic zones are constructed in countries in this part of the world, there tends to be… when these tax holidays when they are being granted to the company, usually it then affects the labour practices that are being enacted on the labour workers working in the zone. So I’m wondering now is that, how does that factor into the discussion that you are also having with because in the very...very prospectus that is given to prospective investors, the main incentives is that you won’t pay any custom fee and have direct access to the Nigerian market itself. So I’m wondering now like how are you.. trying to break that illusion and.. make it clear to

the government, to the people and also to the private investors that, eventually this in itself backfires and doesn’t- the waivers, those incentives do not create the effect that is desired.

P: It doesn’t create those effects. Yes, it can be a powerful incentive to the companies that want to come in, they see it as a.. prospective market for their products- (I: Yeah, Nigeria is a really populated country.) It’s populated, and Nigerians are insane consumers… so whatever you make in this country will sell, it doesn’t matter… (inaudible) when it comes to our economic lifestyles.. But so companies will come in, and they will do business and.. do not necessarily pay higher wages because they’re saving so much money here in the fees and taxes. As a matter of fact, they.. many of them, especially Chinese companies, come with their own labour from China, and do not necessarily hire the local communities. Even the contracts now, I’m dealing with a case currently were even within the free trade zone, some of the contractors, dredging contracts, more than 90% of the dredging contracts are Chinese dredging companies, that are here, that tag along.. they come in with a whole village, you know.. “we are going to need toilet roll, okay you go position yourself to that market, you make the water..” so at the end of the day they create a miniature, self-contained economy that then does not...project any benefits to the people and the..economy that you’re trying to help because eventually.. they buy everything, manufacture it and make the profit but then they are not buying from the local water manufacturer, or even some here now and even setting up all their own medical facilities within the zone, so you know the other Nigerian-run hospitals, they won’t go there when they’re sick, they make their money and they’re off. So at the end of the day, you just create a territorialized extension for China. They can come here and create a highly-insulated economy for themselves and then return. Now with, one major massive damage to local competition because give tax incentives to the Chinese, they manufacture toilet roll within the zone, they have access to the same market and then all of the Nigerian manufacturers of toilet roll- (I: Yeah, they lose-) They cannot compete because they can just roll it in, send the finished product, roll it out and then you are here struggling with your electricity to do your base processing which they don’t have to do because they bring these things in and they’re also not people who respect a lot rules when it comes to trade. So you restrict them to manufacturing, they can naturally bring in a few products and bring it in as though.. I mean who is inspecting? The whole corrupt customs systems will obviously give them the call to bring in finished products from China where economies of scale are high and the machinery is there and the electricity is there, so they produce at nothing and sell at premium, whereas the local producers.. So they planned that for the free trade zone itself, that was part of my initial engagement but my priority was in the interest of my communities, I didn’t want to be distracted by going depp into what the economic effects of the zone are. But part of my concern, which I continue to look into when I have the opportunity is that you know you must do all your costing and everything, the value that these investors will bring, but what is the impact on local, small, medium and even big manufacturers here, you must look at that. Because if you bring in 200 million and you lose both capital and labour, on the local side to the 2/300 million then that’s a useless investment. And that fact you have Chinese people walking around doesn’t mean that the economy is benefiting (I: Laughs.) It just means that you are being very silly in your thinking and wishful. Colours, colour does not translate into increased economic boom necessarily, it’s only if you are able to regulate that system, to really monitor, to get the benefits you deserve, there’s no one doing that, there’s no

one right now in Lagos state or anywhere in the federal government that is really asking those questions and actually trying to figure out whether all of this is just the name and doing of private capital coming to your country or whether it’s doing more damage or potentially going to do damage to the local economy.

I: Thank you! So … what you said in the middle of your answer..this kind of extension of Chinese territory is really interesting to me. There is a bit of.. interest also in the Maritime Silk Road, the Belt and Road project that’s being constructed in China and there.. in the process of setting China’s new business strategy and there were these meetings with the Forum for China-Africa cooperation, and the consortiums that came out of that. I’m wondering now about where… because people could call this a new colonialism? And it’s.. you want to be a bit careful when throwing that kind of term around because there is a particular trauma that’s attached to Nigeria’s colonial history especially with the British empire. But then again, it’s like.. where do you do see this position in Nigeria’s history as a African country with this particular economy and… in terms of its political history where do you think this fits into the many traumas that Nigerian people have to face, ever since independence of even before that?

P: It’s...it’s an unbroken record of… a lot of ill-fated and misdirected… economic interventions by the government.. the idea that.. foreign participation in the economy is critical to achieving that whole objective of economic transformation and sustainability, there’s not question that in today’s world, global economy is completely global as it is local, and are very intertwined but I think that.. over the years, since our independence, probably even before that, we haven’t really..properly benchmarked our development and what it is we want. Because foreign investment works when you have organised the base economy to receive foreign investment, to monitor and optimise the opportunities that are part of a global economy. The problem here is that the very predicate of the economy is not as good, strong, it’s not as cohesive as you might expect it to be. With the result that very often every government throughout the history of this country comes in with its own recipe which does not follow on the previous one which therefore is almost completely free-standing. If you look at the state government, the constituent states and the way they operate, if you are from a particular state and you are a governor, and I’m coming in after you, as soon as I come in, the first thing I do is completely block all of your ideas because you’re done, and then bring in new ideas and those new ideas cost money. When you transition from one platform to the other, you lose money, all the money you spend building up that platform is lost to the economy, then when you’re building your new platform, you don’t think of doing that analysis whether you’re going to be, incurring more cost doing- because when you do it, it’s not politically expedient because you are a member of a different political party. So I think that Nigerians have been treated to this culture of permissiveness and when you think about politics, when you think about the leadership of..between all of these systems, you wouldn’t necessarily look at things between that whole area spectrum, and what is here and where do we want to be, take the urban system here. I mean as big as Lagos is, there’s nothing, that resembles a plan for the development or management of Lagos. Everything about Lagos operates out of the office of the governor, he’s the mayor, he’s the head of council, the waste collector, the governor is everything. You may of departments LAWMA or this, they don’t lift a finger without the direct approval of the governor. You don’t run a city of nearly 20 something

million people waiting on one individual to give orders. When there’s a main system break, nobody’s going to touch until the governor says go ahead, because there’s nobody in the system that has the power or the voice to be able to routine line items, to say “okay, this is the budget maintaining us, have to appropriate those funds through the governor everytime, this happens. That is just.. the systematic problem with the way of the economy is run. Everytime is done in shadows and one of the greatest problems is that these departments of governments… don’t communicate, so nobody is talking to each other, everybody is doing their own things. So, Nigerians have become so accustomed to it, that they actually now think that that’s the way it ought be, that’s the way it is. So the idea that there can be difference is not something that is popularly understood, most people are not at the level of engagement.. that’s why the exploitation by politicians is massive while… and ultimately it is politicians who make economic decisions and I, for me, I think that’s probably one of my biggest critiques of the whole liberal democracy, this whole idea that once you outsource your sovereignty to people are selected periodically through elections to make decisions, and who invariably make economic decisions without coming to the people without getting any kind of mandate for the decisions you make, but then we are all bound by it and we justify it by legitimising it, that they were elected. They were elected, it doesn’t mean they are then experts. And the people who they hire as ministers or as economic managers to run the country themselves don’t owe any kind of obligation to people, they are not accountable to people, they’re not answerable to people, so they are answerable to a man or woman who is himself or herself not persuaded, or not even knowledgeable about what they are doing then we bear the brunt of that system. I think… this whole… neoclassical economic understanding, we must begin to interrogate it and figure out ways of tweaking it to give just a bit more power to those who.. should matter, and that’s the people, and that’s why the economic priorities of the people never matter to the government and the government do what they think is best and then even have to report to the people. So yes, you may liken it to the colonial era of just that whole lack of legitimacy and persecution but it hasn’t changed. The current situation, the sort of economic activities we see are not necessarily different, it’s just that some people are in charge but in their thoughts, in their actions, they’re beholden to the same foreign interests. I was listening to a piece of analysis the other day and some panel in the States talking about the whole high interest rates in Africa and VAT… saying that this country will never develop! Because the cost of money will never let it develop and in the States, in some of the Western European countries you find sometimes interest rates of 0, 1 or 2% and that is modulated in close sensitivity to the economy and you know when to raise and when to lower it, completely calibrated, but here it’s as if we have just one figure, somebody puts it on the table and they walk away and for the text 6 years they run an interest rate of 30% and you begin to wonder, you mean in 6 years we haven’t had any shift in the economic indicators to warrant a review downwards or and upward review.. but it’s slammed at an arbitrary level and how in the world? So the only people who run are people who bring money from outside, borrow from low-interest zones, the Chinese then come in here with those monies and we are giddy because money has come! Not knowing that they are paying those monies back at 1, 1.5% and then a local competitor who wants to catch up, will go to Zenith Bank and they will hit him with 35% so how do you play? The economy of this country is so hopelessly mortgaged in favour of the international and capital that we don’t stand a chance. I mean, see what’s going on in the housing sector; if you go to the Lekki corridor now, you’ll see all those

mighty estates, they’re all empty because no one lives there, all of them are owners, hedge funds, investors, complete financialisation of housing in this country such that now even when nobody lives there, you can’t afford it! Because the owners are not prepared to sell, they’re just holding out capital, holding out money and growing their value in those properties and then make the local landlords also shoot up their rent therefore making housing completely unaffordable and inaccessible to those who need them. How do you build an economy if you cannot regulate the housing sector and people cannot buy their own houses, can’t afford decent accommodation? How do you get the economy to really run as it should when people are just trapped in endemic poverty and the government that should help break those barriers are in fact, helping to reinforce them? It’s a huge challenge.

I: That’s very true. I don’t have too many questions left, I just wanted to ask now about the promotional video, I don’t know if you’re familiar with those promotional videos that they make for the free trade zone, I have always been curious about them because I wonder who is the audience for those videos because to the best of my understanding, they tend to be local and domestic businessmen who are interested in investing in those zones. And I’m wondering, do you see...that those kind of local investors who are not necessarily playing to the tune of really large scale companies like Dangote and so on, where do you see their place? People who are trying to grow their own capital, like young entrepreneurs.. Where do you see, what role do you see them playing in the economic situation of the country as it continues to roll out? And then, do you.. have you been able to fashion any kind of explanation and solution then for the exploitation of these communities? I guess that’s two questions.

P:.. Most of the videos that I know of… prepared by some of these local entrepreneurs are mostly in the property/real estate sector, people who are anticipating that the area is going to experience some boom in the future with migrant economic class moving into the area and some of those businesses that are now positioned to be estates, small companies to provide services, many banks are now heading in that area to create branches especially with all of the big business that is coming up. It’s all good, Nigerians are very enterprising, they will go where they think the money is, they follow the money, and there’s no question that the zone is going to create new economic opportunities across the board but the thing that’s not very exciting is that it’s not being coordinated and in fact… I have a meeting with.. Dr. (inaudible), the MD of the free trade zone, I have a meeting with him next Monday to discuss just this part, to talk about ways of...trying to create a framework of opportunities for small businesses, particularly coming from these communities around the zone. I said to him that it will be a shame that after everything all of the small businesses within the zone and around it end up in the hands of strangers, people who have nothing to do with the zone. They need to create new platforms for education and sensitization of these communities to see who and who might be interested in either coming together to form cooperatives and are engaged in certain kinds of business and offer some incentives, so that they might hope to… to enable them to make those things happen. So it’s a very important question and one that I am particularly interested in because I’ve seen how these things have happened in Niger Delta where the oil sector grew through the years and completely excluded the best and brightest of the locals, their children who go to school, thinking “oh well there’s oil activity in my community, let me go study petrochemical engineering

and then after 5, 6 years of school, 15 years later, they are at home unemployed because the companies would rather employ someone from, who went to school in the U.K., in the U.S. or Germany to come on those rigs when the students, local community kids went to the University of Makurdi , or University of.. local state universities around the state, are not considered for those jobs and nobody says, “these are the people from whose land we extract all of this profit, let’s somehow bring them in” which is why you have these flashpoints in militancy and.. because a lot of those boys who are in the vanguard of those militant groups are themselves well-educated at least by Nigerian standards, so they’re not people who don;t understand strategy, who don’t think, who don’t know where your pressure points are, when it is best to strike and bring you to your knees. They know! They also wait 6 months before they start a new protest because it plays into one environment so they study very carefully, and execute irrespective of some mercenaries (inaudible). So these things are very important...but within the zone right now, apart from the government who are active within the zone, the off-zone economic activity is big on real estate, and that’s probably the biggest uptake right now, people are getting lands and opening up new estates, prototype housing, hoping that business that comes into the area will move into the properties in development… But the other areas.. transport is beginning to, I think the government is also proposing a Lagos intramodal transport networks that will connect the zone to Victoria Island and to Ikorodu and so on.. so that they don’t put all the traffic through V.I. If we can do Ikorodu, that mean you can bypass the Island and offload all of the congestion they have through major road corridors. I’m also friends with the… managing director of Lagos waterways authority and he’s also doing a good thing to open up water transportation to connect other parts of Lagos to decongest traffic and the light railway systems that are being proposed, so those things are good but to me, I always believe that it has to be about people and if it’s not, if you don’t get it right by people then it doesn’t matter how many glass houses you build, if they are not to the benefit of the people who need help the most then that economic strategy to me is not as valuable.

I: Thank you, so the actual last question will be, are there any international human rights organisations working on this and how do you foresee their eventual involvement? Do you think that will be beneficial to somehow incur the eye, the focus of particular organisations like Amnesty and so on? Do you find that valuable?

P: No, I don’t. Amnesty International is not particularly (inaudible) organisation as far as we are concerned. We’ve collaborated with Amnesty a few times and it’s all been just.. there’s this whole very imperialist outlook and the whole North-South issue with local organisations. They come in with a certain attitude, like local groups here or in other places need their help therefore are never attentive to the domestic sensibilities.. and objectives but are often completely governed by their own long-distance understanding of what goes on and what has to be done. So we have had a very… not so good experience working with Amnesty, (inaudible) particularly our last experience with them was to do with the Badiya demolitions where SERAC filed a request for inspection with a World Bank panel and Amnesty came in over one period, were interested in, (inaudible) we did this research over the evictions and co-authored the report, but after that… they completely just went rogue as far as i’m concerned, went ballistic and basically went in to divide the community in order to.. pursue a track they thought was best. Different from

SERAC’s own position. Now this was a case we brought to the inspection panel, we didn’t bring it in collaboration with Amnesty, I signed that request for inspection and… at the end of our research, we basically… the issue was that Amnesty.. before Amnesty came in, we had taken a position with the communities based on good legal advice that we should demand certain levels of compensation. But at some point, members of the community, because there was some delay with the actual payment of compensation, many people were stranded, they were out in the cold without a roof over their heads, obviously the pressure was understandable. But some of them bowed to that pressure to accept the terms that the government was offering not the terms we were demanding. And knowing that it was a World Bank funded project created that basis for eviction, we were holding on for the bank’s own guidelines of compensation. What the government was offering was way below the bank’s standard. I said, “okay, you cannot.. this is a Bank funded project, you cannot use your useless government to access the damage you’ve done and compensate people.” So that was our position, but unfortunately, a few of them who were desperate for money went behind our backs to the government to sign up for that lower package. So we found out, of course, we were very disappointed and.. because we work under very strict understanding with the communities that if we are walking with you, we will make decisions together. We don’t even take any decisions without them, we have a very… I don’t know of any organisation that has the kind of standards we have when it comes to enabling people to be involved with the work we do. We don’t do that nasty advocacy other people do and take up an issue and run with it, no we don’t. We put the people in front, and we are always behind so if they don’t speak, we don’t speak. We speak only because they want us to speak. So we … are very obsessed with that order and that’s what SERAC really is best known for. So when this happened, we were very disappointed and in fact, at that point we had series of meetings where we had decided that we would let them go forward with that matter and resolve it without our participation. So we were willing to withdraw our representation. But of course, for the sake of those who were not a part of the compromise and who were also victims themselves as members of the community, we.. were willing to let go. Only on the condition, that having accepted those terms we were now going to work further to ensure that the government did in fact follow through with the community, because once they sign off, the government gave it to the bank and the management adopted it, having adopted it, it would have taken another year to reverse that entire.. to annul that commitment by the people. So basically we agreed to go forward, so we went ahead and throughout this elaborate process of enumeration, of.. it was huge. The National Arts Theatre was the venue forever, for more than two months, because there was no enumeration done before the demolition, so they had to do it post-demolition and you can imagine verifying who lived where and who owned what after the pieces were gone up into the air, it was not an easy… we went through all that, and Amnesty comes along even though our collaboration had officially ended with the research and the report we’ve done. But they continued to get involved, and we didn’t mind. But then, they immediately saw… “but why are we agreeing to that lower term, instead of insisting on the higher term?” At this point, a lot of the instigators and the leaders who instigated that compromise had gotten their own share.. (inaudible) so many of those people have been paid already, when Amnesty came in and begin to make those observations. We said “okay that’s belated, they were well aware of their entitlement to the higher package when they accepted this lower package and we cannot go now and spend another year challenging that whole thing.” And at this point, the inspection

panel of the bank had created this (inaudible) process which is a new mechanism, in fact that project was the first time the bank had applied that approach, it’s an approach where there is a complaint of a violation by.. government, the bank then is requested by the panel to contact the federal government and if the government accepts liability for that infringement, then they’ll be asked to enter the remedial plan. So without an investigation by the panel, the idea is to cut short the elaborate, long-drawn sometimes 1, 2 year investigation by the panel so that if the government says “yes we were wrong”, they’ll present a way to remedy it, and it’s just a way to fast track access to remedy. So, that was the model we were in, if you understand that, then you can see where the matter was even more complicated for us to back out at that point and opt for a 2, 3 year.. investigation.. which may or may not even result in any sort of remedy. And besides and this point.. more than.. when Amnesty went to interfere in this whole process, more than 40% of those that were evicted had collected money, so at that point.. my point was how do you stop this thing at this point and tell the 60%, “no there’s no money” when they see others spending money, you tell them.. and they’re waiting in line everyday.. waiting to collect their money and you tell them, “no you wait, let’s wait for 2 years”. You have men, those who had collected may be killed, some of the leaders who instigated that agreement may themselves be attacked, and this may lead to complete breakdown of peace in that community. But Amnesty went as far as getting one of our lawyers who left.. who basically resigned because he wasn’t meeting his target, got him to align with those original people, the same original people who went to sign off with the Lagos state government to agree to petition the special panel to take over the request for inspection so that they can manage it and pull down this entire elaborate process that we had gone through. Of course, I.. this was playing 2014 at the bank’s annual general meeting so I was invited by the panel to attend this meeting with the management and the panel and Amnesty was there as well. Because Amnesty had managed to mobilise a good number of international organisation around this issue to be at the hearing, at this meeting. So I got there, completely laid everything they came in with to waste, just tore their argument apart and really demonstrated to the shock of some of their collaborators that they had managed to hoodwink into believing that there was a case to be made here. I laid it out.. they were all completely stunned and disappointed and even quite sorry that they had allowed themselves to get involved to that degree, a few of them still.. the fact that they had started, still stuck with that position, I didn’t care. But that compensation went through.. was completely delivered to every single- (I: Member, yeah.) body before we shut it down. So we can give the panel the okay to end our request which was done. So on that note, and after that experience, and that was not the first. We had a previous experience with Amnesty as well, where they.. we sent one of our researchers, Vic Ohaeri who is at Spaces4Change now, she was my staff here, she left to start Spaces4Change, and.. we sent Victoria to Maiduguri during the intensity of the Boko Haram crisis and insurgency to go do some embedded...research over what was going to happen, and what was being persecuted. In the confidences of some high commanding officers who would allow her, just play as a journalist to observe and bring back a report. Now, Lucy, who was at the time, the Nigerian research for Amnesty International, had just come into Lagos when we had it, so we let them in on that very confidential mission. While Victoria was there, Lucy would call every now and then and speak with her in the evening when she was back at the hotel to ask, “oh, how is it going?” and all that, and she would.. just out of talking to a colleague, she would let out some of the major (I: Observations.) observations going on. On one particular

occasion, after Victoria had talked to Lucy, the next morning Amnesty issues a report where they completely quoted Victoria verbatim! You know.. how dare you?! So that was the first experience where we locked Amnesty out until they came in 2013 with this project and pleaded, apologised and we let them in, and this was now the result. Which is why I said that Amnesty will never again have the pleasure of collaborating with us.

I: That’s fine, that’s no problem. Thank you, that’s all I have today.

P: No problem, it was a pleasure.

Spaces4Change, Victoria Ohaeri, recorded over Skype @ 1:00pm, 06/08/18

Interviewer - Halima HarunaParticipant - Victoria OhaeriTimestamp: from 07:07

I: Are we ok to begin?

P: Yeah, that’s fine.

I: So my first question, Spaces4Change uses media reports and analysis to visualise research for the general public. So how are these methods impactful for visualising information for governmental forces and how do you reach out and communicate then the information and research you conducted to the communities that you’re often representing?

P: Okay, is that just about visualising information? (I: Yeah, it’s about-) about simplifying data? (I: Yes.) Yeah, it’s really about simplifying data… presenting it in a form that everyone, basically anyone can connect with, but when we say everyone sometimes it’s a bit narrower. We are focusing on marginalised groups, people that are usually not at the table when conversations about urban progress and renewal are being made and who are those people? People who are basically in indigenous communities or people that are living on the fringes of society, like the informal settlements, and people who don’t have access to information, regular access to information like the radio, the television, the internet. So what we do is that we do the regular researches that everyone does and.. not everyone, we try to be as rigorous as we can, and that data in that form, we know it’s too difficult for people to.. use it. Using it here means either to understand or acting on it, or using that information to challenge the structures of their own disempowerment. So what we do is that we have to organise something like an outreach or other informal events that enables us to break that data down, to let people understand how a specific policy, government program or action, will affect their lives; either their livelihoods or their social and economic well-being or their health or their environment. So that’s basically what we do. And how that information is transmitted to our target groups.

I:.. Thank you so much. So then, can you detail to me the kind of methods exactly that you use, because you mentioned these outreach programs, but how exactly- what exactly-

P: I said we do the research (I: Oh, I see, okay.) then, yeah, the research is the first stage, you have to do the research and the research is..dependent on the issue. Let’s say it’s the Eko Atlantic project for instance. Research here involves looking at the project documents, who are the financiers of the program, who are the promoters, what is really the rationale, the long-term vision of the state, the short-term goals, the other collaborators involved, the stakeholders that are being consulted, what roles are they playing? What are their interests, economic and political interests? And if there are regulations that need to be complied with, we need to look at the books to see whether stakeholders have met with those legislative requirements. So that’s what I mean by research, after all of the information we have out together, we can now conduct an outreach to use that information to influence changes if we’d identified gaps in the course of the research.

I: So, I’m then wondering, are those research programs- when you are then presenting- at the outreach programs rather, when you are presenting the information to the marginalised groups themselves, what form does that information take? Is it a video, is it a.. lecture- (P: Okay, go ahead)- is it a kind of briefing? (P: Is it?) *service failure caused scrambled call so Interviewer repeats question*

P: Ok, sometimes, it could be a language change, it could be shifting.. we do the research in English, if we are meeting communities from, for instance in…. Itumara, or Bariga, the research will shift to Yoruba, the findings or it might be in Ilaje, it might be in any native language, the research findings will also- beyond the language shift, it will not be presented in that format, using all of those jargons, like the environmental impact assessment, this one, that one, or ecuerages, hydrocarbons, because we are trying to find the closest word in the local language that- or in Pidgin, or in simple English that best represents what we want to communicate. So it could take the form of either a seminar, it could take a focus group of just women, particularly if they’re ills that will affect women by reason of their gender, or will affect young people by reason of their age or their social stratification so those group conversations enable us to give targeted messages to key actors or to key audiences.

I: Alright, thank you, that was helpful. So then another question that I have is how do you think- okay, the knowledge that generated from your own research, does that ever go back into.. is that ever fed back into governmental forces themselves and what impact do you think that information has on the kinds of policies that are eventually meted out on these communities?

P: Ok, there is a way we have worked, there is a strategy we use when there are areas of contention that require communities to speak to government or government to talk to the communities. We have what we call our Town Hall, and in those Town Halls, we try to have a meeting with- we invite governmental actors and of course bring our community actors, so that all of us will be in the same room to have that debate. So, we move from strong misunderstanding to a point of understanding. Hello? (I: Yes, I’m still here.) So we regularly

have those conversations, government-community meetings. So that way, we can just be facilitators in the meeting room, there we facilitate the access of the people directly with the government, and government to the people; and mediate the issues or broker the issues between the parties, that way, government can hear directly from the people what the issues are, and people can ask their questions. And that way, we can now allow information to flow, to have a cross-ventilation of ideas and information, and then what we do after that is follow-up, because that way we have tabled the issues. Sometimes, it is us tabling the issue but tabling it with the voices of the community members, because most times, we don’t just take them meetings, there are also informal conversations where we really get them to also understand some of these issues to a certain level. For instance, we are going for an EIA meeting, we need to have community outreach explaining all the details so they don’t just come into the room with their virgin knowledge. So they have some foundation, and with that foundation, they can engage effectively with state actors. Beyond that, after that, we do what we call follow-up, following-up means what have you- *call breaks*

I: Sorry, my apologies, it seems like we lost each other for a second.

P: Ok, yeah..

I: Thank you, we’ll just continue. So you were telling me about the follow-up program that takes place but also about the foundational knowledge that the communities need initially to be able to attend those Town Hall meetings, right?

P: Yeah.

I: Can you speak a little bit more on that?

P: I just mentioned that some kind of foundational knowledge, at community workshops, where communities are introduced to the issues, this happens only with specific issues where the conversation we are trying to have is very technical.. if it’s on day-to-day issues then they are already familiar with them, that’s good. But if it’s something that is really very technical that they need to understand certain terminologies that they will hear about in a legal meeting where there will be lots of questions on jurisdiction, premier objections and all that. So we need to find them in advance and give them some basic information to work with. Then at these meetings, we broker by facilitating the conversation between the two sides and allowing them to have their debate and resolving the tensions. Then after that, we have our follow-up strategy when required, because there are certain resolutions that will be reached at the meeting, the follow-up allows us to continue to engage the government on one side, what has happened to this issue which we resolved that A or B would happen. So that way, we keep that issue on the radar and.. on official consciousness and at the same time, extract some feedback or out in some pressure that enables change to happen.

I: Thank you, So I’m also wondering now, what.. what role do you think, or what role rather does.. do media and press play on the whole in the success of these outreach programs with

indigenous communities and also with.. non-governmental foreign parties like the French embassy and the Goethe Institut, and also what role does media and press play with when you’re having these kinds of discussions with governmental forces as well?

P: I.. the embassies, how embassies come in is maybe by providing support to non-governmental bodies, I know that the embassies don’t go to the communities directly… Who else did you ask about?

I: I asked about the Goethe Institut..(P: Goethe Institut?) Yes.

P: Those institutes work through local partners, so the local partners facilitate, they are the facilitators that directly engage with the communities and.. in a triangular chain of information.

I: So they work with local parties primarily?

P: They work with local parties, basically but they are also influential in certain issues, which could be on the basis of advicing, or… but usually they don’t do.. they don’t usually make public statements. With media, media is a very critical partner.. a very very critical partner in the sense that they help to get the word out.. when there’s an issue affecting a particular community, sometimes it’s the media reportage of the issues that draws.. or the outreach generated by the media that prompts the government to act.

I: That’s helpful. Can I then ask some kinds of specific questions about your involvement with some of these communities? So at the moment, are you working alongside any of these groups or communities that are on the Lekki axis or are involved in a particular way with.. the communities that live on that stretch of V.I. to Lekki axis where a lot of these new residential projects are taking places? Is Spaces4Change working with any of those communities at the moment?

P: Yeah, we are working with another organisation called Communities Alliance against Displacement. It’s actually an informal network of… organisations that are doing their own thing. So we provide capacity building to that organisation, and I know they have over.. 30 member communities drawn from different parts of Lagos including that corridor.

I: And how do you.. What work and support do you give CAD and how do you work alongside that network of people?

P: We are provide CAD with basically financial and technical support.

I: .. Can you describe the breadth of your own involvement between these kinds of negotiations between private real estate parties and these indigenous communities themselves? Which kinds.. Can you talk about the programs, that’s including the workshops and presentations put together to empower those communities when they eventually have to confront or go head-to-head with private bodies?

P: It’s difficult to count, because we have countless.. there’s no need trying to count them.. some are informal, some are formal, some are secular forums, some are Town Hall meetings, community outreaches, some are just.. our day-to-day regular convening between communities.. Communities come to our office very regularly, to discuss different kinds of things. Last week, we had about 6 different communities converge, it’s hard to keep up with the number but it’s something that we regard as routine. It’s really very routine, the number of- the workshops, the conferences, seminars, the events are very routine.

I: I’m then wondering about the content of these programs, I’m hoping to find out where your own.. what your own stance is, I suppose, on the nature of these negotiations themselves and how you, what kind of information you plan to and have already been empowering communities with?

P: Different kinds of information, it depends on what is the issue. It’s the issue that- the issue in focus determines the information that is handed down.

I: Specifically with the Ibeju-Lekki project, the Lekki free zone itself, how are you..what information are you empowering those communities with and what have you discussing with governmental forces and also private bodies as well?

P: The issues that are arising; displacement, resettlement, compensation.. environmental impact, livelihoods, relocation, inclusion- inclusive development, giving advice or suggestions.. How do you make this program more inclusive, how do you make the displacement less harmful? How do you mitigate consequences, adverse consequences in particular.. so there’s a broad range of- even under the Ibeju- the Eko Atlantic alone, there are a multitude of issues and you can’t take all of them at once. For instance, at the meeting to discuss compensation, you can’t take all of these issues because they are too broad.I: ..I’m them also wondering, how are you- because at the same time, the state powers and the private powers themselves are working together on a lot of these projects and especially on the Eko Atlantic, have a particular narrative that they themselves are concerned with pushing forward so how do you respond to claims that Eko Atlantic makes about the progress that is going to come out of the development of the Eko Atlantic city? For example, when they describe the creation of jobs and when they describe the reduction of traffic congestion and bringing foreign direct investment into the state itself, what is your stance when you’re confronted with these kinds of ideals and how it affect the communities?

P: I think there is a particular report that I sent to you some time ago- (I: Yes.) (inaudible) free trade zone, so that’s basically there. You don’t counter things because you don’t like them , you counter them with fact. (I: Yeah, of course.) So, for instance, let me just give you an instance, if i want to counter...job creation, I would have to have- if I want to counter that a project has job creation potential, it’s not enough for me to say that is not true, it means I have to place that job creation potential side by side with job loss implications, and put the data side by side, so that

any average reader can see.. and independently also draw that conclusion without me saying so. That’s basically what we do.

I: Thank you, that was a helpful bit of information for me to understand. Can I ask what is particularly challenging about working with these communities? Because you talked about being a mediator and being a facilitator, and I would imagine or I would assume that workin.. as, if I’m correctly understanding, as a mediator, will mean that.. it sounds like it would be a difficult position to be in. So i’m wondering how you ferry between the two parties and.. whose interests you’re ultimately, if that’s a question that I can ask, trying to support?

P: Ultimately, we do not hide the fact that we are on the side of the communities, upfront. We’ve been engaging even up to the federal level, for instance, the petroleum host communities, and we’ve attended several, and several, and several- from the Nigerian parliament, the federal parliament, to state.. private meetings in parliament, government agencies, DPR, petroleum bodies. The essence of these meetings, being at the table is important to discuss a wide range of issues, and also there are times you have to make concessions on certain issues depending on what the facts are. But that does not defer from the fact that we are on the side of communities, we are out to.. champion the cause of those that do not ordinarily have a set at the table and those are marginalised communities, vulnerable groups that are most impacted by these development projects. So those are the people we are primarily on the side of. Facilitating, we use that word because some of these issues are not as straightforward and easy as you think, you need to sometimes win trust on both sides, to be able to push your issues forward. So building trust and.. building confidence requires, sometimes, to hold fort and allow issues come out so that you can now be able to intervene effectively, particularly on those issues that can be resolved through- that cannot be resolved organically.

I: Thank you, that was very interesting and helpful. Are there.. what means are the government and state powers employing to communicate with the local communities, if they are trying to communicate at all? I ask this question because..online, there is a particular set of promotional videos pertaining to the free trade zone and also to the Eko Atlantic, that are available for anyone to see. So I’m wondering, are those.. do you think that those videos are directed towards the local communities, in terms of this discussion that we initially had around job creation and so on. Are there any other.. is there any other method or is there any other way that those private and state powers are employing to communicate with the local communities?

P: If there are videos, those videos… I doubt that they are directed at the communities, because how many communities..how many residents in those communities have access to the internet? So digital penetration is low in most of those settlements we are talking about.. that’s what fuels my doubt that those videos may not be targeted at them. They might actually just be videos that are being produced to influence public opinion to support the project.. or to, in case, there’s any bias, they have those videos to help douse that bias. That, in my mind, is the aim of those videos. The government has communicated with the communities, I think I would say yes, but it depends on the kind of communication. While we facilitate those conversations that I told you about when I said we facilitate, is because we realised that government can call a meeting and

the purpose is just to announce their intention, and after the announcement, the curtains are drawn on the meeting. So there is actually no conversation happening, which that you’ve gathered 100 people in one hall, told them, “see, I want to build this road”, and the message is conveyed in a manner that suggests whether you like it or not, this road is going to be here. So there is actually no conversation back and forth..when I say we facilitate, it’s really to allow that conversation back and forth because it’s very very important for people to be able to ventilate their grievances and air their objections, communicate the objections that they have and hear responses to those objections. Those kind of conversations need to happen and that’s what we call engagement because there needs to be a back and forth, there needs to be an opportunity to say, “yes, I agree”, “yes, I don’t agree” and if those issues are resolved earlier on, it helps both parties, particularly the government side because it means that when you start your fieldwork, you might encounter minimal obstructions on site. So, it’s actually good for them, and that’s the baseline for advocacy, letting them know that it’s good for them, it’s good for their public image, it’s good for the program that they want to do, for them to earn a social license to operate in the community. And for the community, the knowledge is important for them, the information is important for them and the more information you have, the more..changes you can influence. So, for both sides, it’s actually a win-win situation, that’s why.. except when government is very very obstinate then it’s not going to happen. Even after all common sense, there will be matters that we have explored that for us to really demonstrate that we are on the communities’ side, we have to go to court and provide them with free legal representation in court.. because that is the highest way we can demonstrate our ties to the community, and to show where our sympathies really lie. But hopefully, we pray that- we hope that we don’t get to that point, we hope that some of these issues will be resolved administratively and both sides leave the conversation feeling that their voices have been heard, their concerns will be addressed or have been addressed and there are still opportunities to engage on that project.

I: Thank you very much. I want to ask now about the..do you perceive that there might be a- there may be any kind of socio-environmental forces that are.. exclude the livelihood of the.. communities and their ability to be financially stable, more or less.. are there any factors outside that.. influence the.. collective decision-making and relations to private and state powers. So, an example of a factor that I’m thinking about is something around.. ancestral and cultural attachment to land, and.. particular kinds of tradition or religious factors that may also influence the decisions that are made by those communities. How then do you factor in these influences if there are any, into your own process of facilitating and mitigating in the end?

P: Yeah, those issues usually come up, particularly when you’re implementing a project in an indigenous community. So indigenous here means, the community’s stay on the land predates the local government and sometimes, even predates the state. So there are certain attachments and peculiarities, that.. come into play in the conversation, which naturally may not come into play if that project was located elsewhere, where the geographical conditions or environmental conditions are different. So it’s an issue, cultural attachment is an issue, religious.. it’s even a right protected in some of our laws. For instance, look at Nigeria’s petroleum act, there are sections that talk about sacred trees, sacred shrines.. things that should not be.. affected or

destroyed, either during seismic operations or whatever kind of petroleum operations. We have laws that protect those things.

I: Can you give me an example of an instance where you.. where a situation included this factor and how then were you able to.. negotiate that in your own process?

P: Ok, the example.. the example that comes to my mind is Bariga community, where..the last meeting we had, that was in February 2002.. in Lagos where we were having a proposal to ministry officials to allow people from the Bariga waterfront to come up with a waterfront development plan. And the reason we gave was that the people were traditional fishermen, worshipping the gods of the sea and.. it will work hardship on them to be relocated elsewhere that they are not connected to water. So their proximity to water sources is crucial to their livelihoods, and their human existence.. existence as human beings because that’s tied to their ancestral, religious.. and everything, cultural beliefs. So it’s still an issue that we are still..that is still going on.. with the ministry and..I also know that during the Otodo Gbame crisis, it was also another issue that came up.. where people wanted to be resettled along the lines of what they worship and where they work. I also know that back in the day, if you spoke with Mr. Morka, he would have mentioned it, that there were certain communities in the Ibeju-Lekki area, there were two communities that basically didn’t want to move and their reason was that of the sea goddess or something, that they were worshipping. So, I think, like I mentioned it, even our legislations take notice of that factor, that certain cultural beliefs still hold sway and those beliefs should be respected. I: Thank you, I really appreciate that. Can I also..ask now about… because.. a lot of these issues have a great media and press.. reputation and presence and I’m imagining a lot of these cases as you mentioned, there tends to involvement of foreign parties, like we initially mentioned the French embassy. But when you’re then working with bodies, foreign civic organisations such as Greenpeace and Amnesty International.. what then is their role, what is the role of these international organisations in these situations since a lot of the cases, and the communities are very very location-specific? Are there instances where other international organisations have been involved and what has that played out into in the process of negotiating and trying to secure stability for these communities?

P: I didn’t get your question.

I: So I’m wondering about the involvement of international civic organisations that are-

P: The international organisations are in a better position to answer the question- (I: Well, I-) Spaces4Change is not an international organisation, we are a local organisation, I know international organisations mainly work with local partners, so if they want to get involved.. they will be the ones to define the scale of their own engagement, and how they want to go about it.

I: That’s useful, thank you.. The state and the federal government, I also understand, often employ questions of social insecurity to facilitate the unlawful eviction of people and the demolition of communities. So what other kind of social ills that are non-governmental, for

example, like I mentioned social insecurity but also… we talked about traffic congestion as well. What other kinds of social ills like those are used by these powers to excuse that injustice that is meted for capital generation?

P: Those social ills you talk about… I think all over the world, governments capitalise on them to justify.. violations of human rights, violations acts that otherwise would be regarded as human rights violations. So you’ve listed them already, whether it’s sanitation, insecurity, crime-fighting, just urban renewal, those are handy excuses that I see everywhere in the world that I see employed by governments to.. achieve their own goals.

I: Yeah.. so I’m wondering about your strategy.. to confront these things. You mentioned the.. condition or strategy wherein you.. place one instance with another basically, two facts next to each other. So I’m wondering then what is your strategy with something like that, with something like crime-fighting and social insecurity.

P: The same strategy, we do research around.. yeah.

I: Can I then ask what roles do other..what roles do other civic non-governmental parties, like the church for example, play as social facilitators in these communities and how does Spaces4Change work in tandem with these groups?P: In Lagos, do we work with churches? No.. we work with churches on other issues, not on the urban.. urbanisation issue. (I: Okay..) We work with the church maybe on other issues regarding civil society space but not urbanised issues.

I: Okay.. yeah, thank you. i just want to see if there are any questions I have on my own side for the project… Do you have any questions for me?

P: Yeah, the questions I have for you is.. most of your questions had to do with our own organisational strategy, and nothing much about Eko Atlantic city.

I: It’s because I’ve been in the process of speaking to a lot of the private investors myself and i’m hoping that.. because a lot of the time, the story around those communities is a very similar one, like we were saying the injustice is meted and excused by particular social insecurities and then.. there’s a procedure that a lot of the civic organisations have to go through. So what I’m (P: It has focused really on our procedure and not really on Eko Atlantic.) yeah, yeah, I mean I do have questions about Eko Atlantic, I could ask you specifically about the breath of your involvement in that.

P: I’ll just… those are the only questions I have for you. You asked me if I have any questions.

I: Oh I see, yeah, the reason why I haven’t asked any questions is because I.. personally, for the project I’m interested in the.. processes themselves that allow for these things to take place so that a kind of framework for negotiation can eventually been understood. Because I’m interested to see how you deal with the issues themselves. But I mean, in terms of Eko Atlantic, I spoke

to.. an IT officer there and the discussion that we had was around.. the environmental effects of the sand banks, and also of the land reclamation that is happening off the coast, so it’s an interesting prospect to me. The one question I do have, I didn’t necessarily plan for it, but the one question I do have actually about that is.. when I went to go see.. when I went to ethir sales office, what I was told was that.. the..land reclamation that’s taking place is basically helping to stem the erosion of the, of Ahmadu Bello Way and the rest of V.I. and then what I had asked was that.. what they had said was that, because they are a privately-funded project, Lekki so to speak, is not under their jurisdiction. I thought that was very interesting.

P: Yeah, but.. Ahmadu Bello Way is not where the coastline starts and ends- (I: Yeah, of course.) It goes all the way down, down, down. But that’s fine, if that’s their response.

I: But.. can you.. is it possible for me to get some information now on about the work that you are doing there?

P: Yeah, I think I’ve told you all… for our community work, we do that under the vehicle of CAD..(I: In terms of the-) CAD is the leading-

I: In terms of the.. Eko Atlantic project itself, is there.. any kind of response that you also have to the.. because I mean, the land reclamation is eventually flooding other parts of that coastline, and.. their response was that they’re just a private organisation..

P: That all requires scientific evidence, it is known that the land reclamation is causing flooding and coastal erosion in other parts, in other coastline communities, but the government is asking for the scientific evidence and they know the communities… that evidence is not available.

I: Do you.. I’m not sure now.. the report that I initially got from you, does that contain the information?

P: It addresses the questions but I’m not sure we have the resources to generate that kind of evidence but there is an oceanography institute, I don’t know if.. it’s also on that Ahmadu Bello, I don’t know if you’ve talked to anybody there.

I: No, actually, I haven’t spoken to anyone there.

P: Yeah, if you talk to the oceanography..(inaudible) I used to have the director’s number, I don’t think it’s on my phone.. I’ve not spoken to him in quite a while. But you should talk to them, they are the ones that should be able to make that determination, on the impacts of the land reclamation on other communities. I remember, I interviewed a person writing that report.. I interviewed them on, not the land reclamation but the dredging, the sand dredging (I: yeah, the sand dredging.) Yes, I did ask them whether the dredging was responsible for the erosion, for the beachline erosion, I mentioned like close-by communities and they told me no. (I: Really?) So their expert opinion could be useful, very relevant. Like I mentioned, we are a research organisation, so we are very careful about the data. (I: Yeah, of course.) So if we want to see

something that requires some kind of scientific conclusion, I would want to check. Even there is popular consensus pointing in one direction..

I: I see. The other thing that’s interesting to me is.. what has always been of interest to me is the… the economic.. the economic eventualities that come out of a lot of these projects. So that’s why I mentioned foreign direct investment, I would also.. I personally would be very interested in the..economic evaluations around the projected impact of the new city on Nigeria’s.. on Lagos’ domestic economy and on the country as a whole. Because.. I’m sure this is something that you are also very familiar with, is that while there is a particular understanding..a particular narrative that the capital is directed in one direction, or is directed towards a mass population; quite often the capital actually directed towards a very small minority of people who tend to be already part of the upper elite class, right?

P: Yes, I think I’ll send you a link, I don’t know if you’ve checked our online blogs, I did mention that the project was elitist.

I: I..(P: Brazenly expensive, I’ll just send you the link after we finish.) Yeah, maybe I will get the link from you. I’m.. I don’t want to take much more of your time, I would really appreciate the opportunity to speak to you again once I.. because I’m sure that I’ll have more questions after I look through some of the documents that you will send me. Is that okay?

P: Yeah, that will be fine.

I: Thank you very much, for everything and also for pushing me to ask a bit more questions as well.

P: Ok, thank you, Halima.