From Naija News
After an uninterrupted 11-year stay in Spain, Teniayo Martins visited Nigeria, and gamely offered to stay with her senior sister, Busola, in the two rooms that she lived in a public yard in the slums of Ijesha, Surulere, Lagos.
“Even before I came back, I knew it wouldn’t be easy staying in such a place, but I wanted to spend time with my only sister and not go and waste money in some hotel,” she said.
“I wanted to show her that my love for her is greater than whatever discomfort I might face in living there.”
Ms. Martins bravely endured the living conditions of tenants of the building for two days; woke up to find rashes all over her body on the third day; and fled to a nearby hotel.
The massively growing population of the city and its attendant effect on the astronomical rent rates have resulted in the large number of slums that dot the metropolis.
The buildings in these slums are usually constructed in such a manner that as many single rooms as possible are crammed into a building, often with a single toilet and bathroom.
Some of these buildings have no kitchens, and tenants cook inside their living rooms in some cases.
READ ALSO: LAGOS: A Ticking Time Bomb “The living conditions in these ‘face me-I face you’ arrangements are quite awful,” said Elizabeth Kadiri, an estate agent. “But the fact is that they are very important for the low-income earners.
For one to be able to afford living in at least a three-bedroom flat, that person definitely needs to earn a decent wage in this city.”
Tenants of such living quarters have
devised ingenious means of adjusting to the harsh conditions of living in these public yards.
Some of them have gone to extreme lengths to preserve their sanity.
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