Lagos development boom sparks fears slum dwellers will be left homeless

Lagos, Nigeria

HAVING fled as her home and shanty town in Lagos burned to the ground, Roseline Alphonse does not know if she will ever see her husband again, or where she and her children will call home.

Ms Alphonse is one of 30,000 residents of the Otodo Gbame slum who were left homeless last month when their community was razed. "The police came in the middle of the night and started burning all the homes," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, recalling how she was woken by the screams of her neighbours. "They burnt my shop and everything inside," said Ms Alphonse, whose husband disappeared during the chaos, leaving her and her six children to seek shelter in wooden canoes on the Lagos Lagoon.