Nigerian ‘Dustbin Estate’ built on garbage dump

The lack of affordable housing in Nigeria is driving some residents to look for new places to build their homes.

With about 21 million residents, Lagos generates over 10,000 tonnes of waste every day, with most of it ending up in landfills.

Some Lagosians have settled on top of one of these sites, known as the “Dustbin Estate.”

Plastic bags, old clothes and boxes have created jagged hills and gorges on this dump.

Most people living here are low-income earners, looking for an affordable place to stay.

Fifteen-year-old Emmanuel Arogbola and his family moved there three years ago.

He said that, despite his parents reinforcing their house with cement, the stench makes it difficult to live there.

“Sometimes this canal normally smells here, normally irritates everywhere. Everybody will just go inside. Lock the window, lock the door, everybody will just be inside,” he said.

About 4,000 migrants from rural areas turn up in Lagos daily, driving up unemployment and fuelling the housing shortage.

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Experts have warned of the dangers of living on dumps.

Much of the waste is organic and environmentalist Desmond Majekodunmi said if there was better waste management, there’d be more space for housing.

“There will be far less waste there if people would adopt…the three R principles of reduce, reuse and recycle. We’ve got to reduce our consumption, that’s a global problem and we have to reduce, and we have to reuse. But the issue of the dustbin estate, it’s an issue of good governance at the end of the day,” he said.

Government has put plans in place to convert the garbage into electricity, of which the city has a desperate shortage.

– eNCA