Most evenings, Abigail Hounkpe can be found paddling her wooden canoe on the murky waters in Makoko, a waterfront community on the Lagos lagoon in Nigeria's southwest. She stops in front of a church perched precariously on top of stilts.

Holding the wooden paddle in one hand, she stretches the other to take a photo of the church. She then enters the coordinates into her phone.

"I have lived here for all of my life and I still find places I have never seen," Hounkpe said.
Her trips around the floating community dubbed the 'Venice of Africa' are part of a project that seeks to put the renowned slum on the digital map.

A settlement for diaspora

Makoko has a diverse and colorful history and was established when fishermen from nearby Togo and the Republic of Benin settled there about a century ago.

Like much of Lagos, it is highly multicultural; conversations on the floating slum are usually in a language which is a peculiar medley of Yoruba, French, and Egun, a local dialect.

The slum which was initially just a place to fish has grown to be the home for generations of fishermen from neighboring countries.

It is hard to tell how many people reside in Makoko as there has never been an official census carried out there, however, locals estimate more than one million.

But the Lagos government would prefer that Makoko does not exist.

In 2012, the Lagos state government announced plans to demolish the slum and gave a 72-hour eviction notice to the residents.

The stilt structures in the fishing community posed a security risk and undermined the megacity status of the city, Lagos state authorities said in a letter served to the community, local chief Victor Panke told CNN.

The government came with the police and soldiers to evacuate the community and destroy their homes, according to Panke.

A community leader, Timothy Hunpoyanwha, was shot dead by police which led the authorities to pause on the eviction process, Panke said.

Since then, he says Makoko has received subtle threats of eviction and they are watching keenly as other waterside communities are demolished.

"We are still living in the fear of losing our homes and land," he added.
Lagos Commissioner for Physical Planning & Urban Development Idris Salako told CNN that authorities in the state was not behind the eviction of residents in waterfront communities but gave no further details or comment in his response to the allegations.

Fear of looming eviction

The digital mapping project is going some way to allay the fears of Makoko locals who are worried their land is at risk.

Launched in September 2019 by Code for Africa in partnership with Humanitarian OpenStreetMap is working to put Makoko on digital maps in a bid to drive social and financial inclusion.

"We want the community, like other communities in the world, to be available and navigable on maps. From there, new development plans might come" Jacopo Ottaviani, Chief Data Officer Code For Africa told CNN.

To take up this project, young residents of Makoko were taught to pilot drones and populate the map with images from the community. Hounkpe is one of the residents on the project that is also teaching residents how to fly drones.

"For years, Makoko has been ignored by governments of the state. This project is the first part of a conversation around inclusion. We are helping map out Makoko so that governments and other organizations can provide interventions and access to social services like electricity, healthcare, and education." Ottaviani told CNN.

Mass demolitions

In recent years, authorities in Nigeria have embarked on mass demolitions of prime waterfront slums citing safety and security concerns.

Rights activists, who fiercely oppose the decision, say the evictions are carried out often to appease property developers and to create luxury urban dwellings.

More than 30,000 families in Otodo Gbame were left with nowhere to live after they were forcibly evicted, a decision that was ruled unconstitutional by a Lagos High Court in 2017, although many of those who lost their homes are still awaiting justice.

According to Megan Chapman of Justice and Empower Initiative (JEI) the government does not have the right to evict residents from their communities without due process.

"A part of due process in an eviction process is making plans from compensation and resettlement. These communities are evicted without alternatives and the residents are expected to disappear, like they never existed," Chapman said.

Benjamin Aide is the administrator of a primary school - Makoko Dreams, which provides free education to over 200 children in the community.

Aide has also joined the local mapping team to put other landmarks in the community on the map. "I like the maps. It will show the world that we are here and make the government look at how they can help us develop this place." Aide says. But there are fears that the mapping project, while desirable, could attract unwanted attention and leave Makoko vulnerable to new eviction attempts.

Rather, they hope it will spur the authorities into action to assist them in development plans for Makoko.

"We hope this thing will help the government see that we are here and we are a lot of people that have been fending for ourselves for generations," Panke tells CNN.

Informal slums

Despite its status as the fifth largest economy in Africa, the wealth in Lagos remains stubbornly concentrated in the hands of a very few.

It's hard to know exactly how many people live in Lagos. According to the United Nations it is around 14 million people, while the Lagos State government says it's more than 20 million.

More than half of Nigeria's residents live in slum settlements, according to the 2015/2016 Slum Almanac. Nigeria's population, according to the US Census Bureau is growing at a rate of 3.2% a year and is estimated will be at more than 400 million people in 2050.

According to the UN-Habitat report from the United Nations Millennium Development Goals database, the population of Nigerians living in informal slums in urban areas has dropped to 50.2 percent from 77.3 percent in 1990.

Makoko is one of many settlements provides cheap housing alternatives for urban dwellers.
"We have asked that the government come help us out by providing healthcare, electricity, and schools, but we have not heard back from them on anything," Panke says.

An untapped community

The mapping project presents a lifeline for the people of Makoko.

Ottaviani, who is leading the project hopes the maps will help the government understand the social-economic need of residents in the community.

"Makoko has been untapped by the government and this means there is a lot of potential in trade, taxes, and development for the community and for the government."

For Hounkpe, the project has been an opportunity to learn about maps, drones, and her community, but it is a lot more.

"With this mapping project, I know I am fighting for my life and the lives of other people like me in Makoko.

CNN

Set them free! The judge who liberates Nigerians forgotten in jail

In a crowded prison courtyard in Suleja, Nigeria, a judge flipped through a battered folder detailing the case against a young woman who stood quietly before him in a faded pink dress.

She was charged with “issuing a dud cheque”, a crime that carries a maximum sentence of two years in prison. But she’d already spent three years in prison awaiting the outcome of her trial.

The judge, Justice Ishaq Usman Bello, sat at a long table surrounded by fellow judges and prison officials. From an awning hung a framed poster of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper and a broken clock. Inmates crowded in the cellblocks either side of the courtyard to watch the proceedings, their arms hanging through the bars.

After several minutes of hushed discussion at the high table, Justice Bello leaned toward the microphone and spoke. “In light of the duration of detention exceeding the maximum penalty for the alleged crime, I hereby discharge you from this prison. You are free to go.”

The woman, who’d been stoical before the pronouncement, collapsed to the ground and began to sob. She thanked God and the judge in equal measure, and the inmates watching from their cells erupted into cheers.

By the end of the day, 13 other inmates had been released. Four had been in prison on remand longer than the maximum sentence for their alleged crime. The others had been imprisoned for failing to pay tiny fines for minor offences.

They were just the latest beneficiaries of a mission to deal with Kafkaesque failures in Nigeria’s justice system. In 2016, Justice Bello began visiting prisons in his own jurisdiction, and the following year a presidential committee on prison reform and decongestion was established, which is led by Justice Bello and funded by the federal attorney general. The judge has visited 36 prisons and ordered the release of 3,822 inmates – about 5% of the Nigerian prison population.

“It is part of my statutory responsibilities as chief judge to visit the prisons and address some challenges,” Justice Bello said. “One of them is congestion, others are when [defendants] stay in prison without going to court. There are many lapses that need to be addressed, so it has been my tradition as head of court to do that.”

Spending longer awaiting trial than the maximum sentence for the crime violates the most basic legal protections guaranteed to Nigerian citizens, not to mention one of the few principles of international law that can be considered truly universal – habeas corpus.

Chukwudi, whose second name is being withheld because his trial is ongoing, spent nearly five years incarcerated before being released on bail in 2016.

In 2012, Chukwudi was driving from the capital city, Abuja, to visit his family in south-eastern Nigeria when he was pulled over by officers from the Special Armed Robbery Squad (Sars). He was arrested and accused, though not formally charged, with purchasing a stolen vehicle. He denies the allegation.

Chukwudi was taken to Sars headquarters in Abuja. It was almost a year before he was brought before a court to be formally charged. The first time he appears on official records is 5 March 2014, when he was sent to a medium security prison near the capital to wait for his trial. “I was happy when I was brought to court because the pain of Sars is too much”, he told me. “In Sars, you are relieved only by the mercies of God. I saw people die. It was survival of the fittest.” Neither Chukwudi nor his family could recall the precise date he was arrested. Sars did not respond to requests for comment.

Chukwudi hoped that once he was finally brought to court, his ordeal would soon be over. “But it happens not to be like that,” he told me. “You discover that a whole lot of systems are involved.”

Like tens of thousands of Nigerians, Chukwudi was denied bail because he was unable to provide a guarantor.

Despite Nigerians’ constitutional right to bail, many judges fear defendants may disappear if released, and believe that “remanding” defendants in prison serves the greater cause of justice.

Countless visits to court resulted in Chukwudi’s case being adjourned, sometimes before it had even begun, forcing him back to prison while he waited for a new date.

“Most times you feel like crying,” he told the Guardian. “You know you are returning to where you are coming from. Every time you go to court you must have prayed a lot, and every prayer is backed up with hope. You will tell your people: ‘Today I am leaving.’ Only for you to go to court to find the judge didn’t sit. Only for you to go to court and they brought you too late, the court has finished sitting. Only for you to go to court and find that your prosecution council is not there. So the aim of going to court is wasted, and they have their cases adjourned for another day.”

By the time he was finally granted bail in November 2016, Chukwudi’s father was dead, his job and home lost, and friends and family distanced from him. “Normally if you come out of prison it should feel good. One experiences another freedom. But in Nigeria that is where another problem starts for you,” Chukwudi said. “Anybody who comes to know that you have been in prison doesn’t want to relate with you. Even your own family members. The way they are seeing it, the name of the family has been put to shame because you went to prison. When I came out, I learned that nobody wanted to see me.”

These days he is the pastor of a church known as the Transformation Ministry that supports former inmates returning to civilian life. Eight ex-prisoners are currently benefiting from free basic accommodation. “I just fixed two with laundry jobs, and am working on computer training for the others,” he said. “It’s my way of giving back.”

Remand inmates make up about 69% of Nigeria’s prison population. While this is not high compared to many western countries, the length of time they spend awaiting trial is. In prisons where this data is available, most defendants have been on remand for between one and four years, some for more than a decade.

“In Rivers State, 14 people were awaiting trial for 15 years. Not one day were they taken to court,” Justice Bello told the Guardian, shaking his head. “We had to release them.”

Because there is no systematic way to monitor cases, defendants may simply be forgotten in prison. Data collected by the legal aid organisation, Network of University Legal Aid Institutions, shows that there are more than 160 cases where defendants have not been assigned a date for their next trial. “Some of them last attended court in 2017,” the network’s Charissa Kabir told me.

Another factor that exacerbates crowding is the practice of imprisoning convicts unable to pay small fines for minor offences. Research by Prawa, a Nigerian security, justice and development NGO, found that up to 80% of inmates were living on less than $130 per month prior to arrest.

Income lost during remand combined with legal expenses often leave convicts deep in debt and unable to pay, meaning many serve between six and 12 months in prison instead. Up to 90% of inmates the presidential committee has released fall into this category. “Fines are paid by the government, and sometimes Nigerian NGOs”, said the committee secretary, Leticia Ayoola-Daniels.

Numerous cases reflect extreme poverty. “We found a scenario where a pregnant woman was said to have stolen cassava, and she was there awaiting trial for almost four years,” said Justice Bello. “It’s lamentable.” Shortly after arriving in prison, the woman miscarried.

He worries about the damage prisons inflicted on defendants behind bars. “To be in prison is a very dangerous thing. Some of them have attained some level of mental deterioration because of the horrendous nature of the environment they live in,” he said.

The judge seems to be trying to activate the justice system by shaking its conscience rather than by devising a new judgment – the usual tactic for activist judges. He invites officials who have unresolved cases to prison to face defendants, and account for what went wrong. By admonishing lax lawyers and judges he turns turns lapses which previously went unnoticed into a source of personal and professional shame.



“The visits do try to restore fairness, in the sense that they acknowledge that lapses in the administration of justice have resulted in the loss of freedom,” said Melissa Omene, a lawyer who has worked across government and civil society justice reform efforts.

“Addressing a practitioner’s failure to carry out his duty requires more than simply calling on him to do so. Did he fail to act due to a lack of interest or resources? Did he fail to act for political reasons, or fear? Each of these will require a different reform strategy.”

Justice officials need to be able to see into their own systems in order to detect and manage problems. To do that, they need better data. A quieter but potentially transformative piece of the committee’s work is the rollout of a federal prison (now corrections) information management system (Cims) as part of its wider efforts to establish a national criminal justice database.

Cims has been partially implementing in 16 states, but only one prison is making full use of the platform. It features an early warning system that alerts the attorney general if an inmate stays on remand beyond 90 days, and allows officials to identify and hold to account officials and departments that cause unreasonable delays.

If well managed, Cims could regulate some of the chaos that currently governs the lives of inmates. At the very least, digital records will make it harder for them to officially disappear. But it’s is only part of the solution. If not backed by political clout and people able to use the data, Cims risks remaining a technical solution to a political problem.

Nigeria’s justice system has been the subject of numerous reform efforts over the past two decades. Committees have been formed, new laws passed, presidents come and go, and people like Chukwudi continue to lose years of their lives to a system that cannot or fails to detect those who fall through its cracks.

Despite Chukwudi’s ordeal and everything he’s lost, when he compares himself with other former inmates, he still considers himself one of the lucky ones. Every Sunday morning his congregation files into the little church he has coaxed to life. The room fills with people, music and choruses of prayer, and it makes him feel a part of something holy.


The Guardian

Bollywood and Nollywood collide in a tale of a big fat Indian-Nigerian wedding

Two of the world's biggest movie industries, Bollywood and Nollywood have joined forces to produce a new movie about an inter-cultural love story.

Titled 'Namaste Wahala' it is directed by businesswoman-turned-filmmaker, Hamisha Daryani Ahuja, who weaves a tale across two diverse and rich cultures -- India and Nigeria.

'Namaste Wahala' loosely translates to 'Hello trouble' and it is filmed mostly in English with a mix of Hindi and Nigeria's pidgin language.

Ahuja has lived in Nigeria since she was a child and says her experience living in Africa's most populous country inspired her to make her debut film.

"I am Indian but I have lived in Nigeria my whole life. Everyone loves Bollywood and Nollywood, so I thought 'how is it that no one has done a love story between the two?'" she told CNN.
Now in her 30s, Ahuja says she decided to fuse her experiences from both cultures to create a love story that people can relate to.

The movie will be released in April and features top movie stars from both countries including veteran Nollywood actress Joke Silva, Richard Mofe Damijo and Segal Sujata, Ini-Dima Okojieand Ruslaan Mumtaz.

Colorful celebrations

Nigerian and Indian weddings are colorful and lavish affairs -- and they are also big business.
A Nigerian wedding can cost up to $13,515, while India's wedding industry is reported to be worth $50 billion, according to Vogue Business.
Through Namaste Wahala, both wedding industries fuse, showcasing a celebration between both cultures.

"The story has been in my head for a long time but I wanted it to be completely accurate. I wanted both cultures to be portrayed the same, that no culture was above the other," Ahuja said.
Filmed entirely in Lagos, Nigeria's commercial nerve center, Ahuja says it features classic Bollywood dancing and singing scenes to keep it as authentic as possible.
"It is a fun comedy, a lot of laughs with a few tears," she said.

Nollywood to the world
 
Nigerians have taken to social media to express their excitement about the upcoming movie release.
"The name alone wants me to watch it. Namaste [means] peace. Wahala [means] trouble/problem. Gotta watch it with some Chicken Biryani and Jollof Rice for the culture(s)," wrote Twitter user Jerome Antwin- Lewis.

This is not the first international collaboration with Nollywood. Over the past years, Nigeria's movie industry has partnered with China, France, and the US to produce and distribute wide-ranging movies.

In 2019, for example, China and Nigeria partnered to create their first major movie collaboration, and in the same year French Media giant, Canal+ acquired Nigeria's ROK studios as part of its expansion plans into Africa.

Ahuja says these partnerships are important because they help showcase Nollywood's talents beyond the walls of Africa.

"We have so much talent in Nollywood. What I think with these international collaborations is that we will be able to showcase all these amazing work internationally."

By Aisha Salaudeen

CNN

Video of manatee dragged along road sparks outrage

Nigeria's environment ministry has launched an investigation after a video emerged of an endangered manatee, also known as a sea cow, being dragged along a dusty road by a group of young men.

It is not clear when the footage was filmed.

The animal has been tied in ropes and can be seen trying to get away.

Deputy environment minister Sharon Ikeazor branded the video "very distressing", and said officials were trying to rescue the creature.

Ms Ikeazor said the incident took place in the oil-rich Niger Delta region, and called for an awareness campaign "to educate our people to protect the manatee".

Manatees are large marine mammals which are mostly herbivorous.

It is illegal to hunt them in Nigeria, but they are still killed for their meat, oil, and organs which are used in traditional medicine, AFP news agency reports.

Many people in the Niger Delta are poor, despite the region's oil wealth.

Pressure group the Blue Planet Society, which campaigns to preserve ocean life, said it was shocking that a "supposedly protected West African manatee can be abused in such a public way".

There are about 10,000 manatees along the coast of West Africa, AFP reports, but their numbers are in steep decline.

BBC

Video - Nigeria's 8 year-old Sekinat Quadri shaking up boxing

In Nigeria, an eight year-old girl is punching her way to the top of Nigerian boxing scene. And with just three year's experience, the future star is hoping to someday conquer the continent and the world. CGTN's Deji Badmus brings us her motivational story.