WHEN THE BULLDOZER ARRIVES

There is a familiar scene in Nigerian cities. A roadside trader settles into a small space and begins to work. An artisan puts his tools down and waits for customers. The business grows slowly, sometimes over several years, until the improvised shop becomes part of the neighbourhood.

Then government decides that the space must be cleared.

The argument may be sound. Roads must remain accessible. Drainage channels cannot become extensions of shops. Pedestrian walkways should not disappear under trading tables. Cities require planning and enforcement.

The trouble begins when enforcement becomes the only policy government has for dealing with people whose businesses have grown outside the formal market system.

The trader is told to leave. The artisan is removed. The structure is demolished. The official exercise ends with the space looking cleaner than it did the previous day.

But the economic problem that produced the roadside business remains.

That is the part of urban enforcement that governments rarely discuss.

A man does not normally choose a roadside because he has fallen in love with an illegal structure. He chooses it because it is where his modest capital can operate and where customers can reach him. A mechanic who cannot afford a formal workshop looks for a place where a vehicle can be brought to him. A food seller follows the movement of workers and commuters. A trader needs visibility because visibility is often the difference between selling and going home with unsold goods.

Remove the space and the economic need does not disappear.

This is why the recurring demolitions and clearances across Lagos, Ibadan, Abeokuta and Abuja deserve more serious thought than the usual photographs of newly cleared roads.

Government has a legitimate duty to regulate the city. The poor citizen has an equally legitimate need to earn a living. The difficult work of governance lies in reconciling the two.

The easy part is demolition.

There have been instances in which governments have tried to provide alternatives. In Oyo State, the Makinde administration has constructed shops and directed that some roadside traders be moved into them without payment. That approach is considerably more sensible than removing traders and leaving them to find another pavement.

But even that solution requires protection from the familiar Nigerian habit of allowing formal commercial spaces to become too expensive for the people they were meant to accommodate.

A shop built for petty traders should not eventually become an investment opportunity for people with deeper pockets while the original traders return to the roadside.

That would merely reproduce the problem under a different roof.

The cost of formal trading space is already a serious obstacle for many small operators. In parts of Lagos, Abuja and other major cities, rents and charges can quickly place conventional premises beyond the reach of a petty trader or artisan whose business survives on daily turnover.

This is where the argument becomes uncomfortable for government.

How long can a state refuse to provide affordable spaces for informal workers and then condemn those workers for operating informally?

There is also the question of official tolerance.

Some roadside businesses do not appear overnight. Authorities often know they exist. Local officials encounter the traders. Various charges and levies may be collected. Market associations operate around them. Political actors know where to find them during election campaigns.

Then a different administrative decision is taken and the same activity is suddenly treated as though it has appeared from nowhere.

A government does not lose its power to enforce planning regulations because it has previously tolerated an illegal structure. But prolonged official tolerance creates an obligation to handle enforcement responsibly. People need reasonable notice. Where relocation is possible, it should be organised before demolition. Where government itself has encouraged or authorised occupation, the circumstances require even greater care.

The objective should be to regularise where regularisation is possible and relocate where relocation is necessary.

There is little wisdom in simply pushing people from one location to another.

That is what often happens. A roadside is cleared in the morning and, after some time, another collection of tables and sheds appears elsewhere. The officials return. Another clearance follows.

The cycle continues because the underlying economy has not changed.

Nigeria’s informal sector is not a temporary nuisance waiting for government to eradicate it. It is one of the places where Nigerians have created employment for themselves in the absence of sufficient formal opportunities. That does not give informal operators a licence to violate planning laws. It does mean that government should understand what it is regulating.

The artisan whose small workshop is removed is still an artisan afterwards.

The trader whose stall disappears still has to feed a family.

The government therefore needs to ask a more useful question before sending out the bulldozers: where is this person expected to continue the business that provides his livelihood?

If there is a lawful answer, enforcement becomes defensible.

If there is none, the exercise risks becoming little more than displacement dressed up as urban renewal.

This is particularly important because municipal enforcement can easily become selective. A small kiosk presents no serious resistance. A petty trader rarely has the resources to contest an official decision. That makes such people easy targets.

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The rule of law should not be measured by how efficiently government can remove those least able to resist it.

A city needs order, certainly. But order that simply makes poverty less visible is not urban development.

The real test is whether the city can accommodate the people who live and work in it without forcing the poorest among them into a permanent game of hide and seek with enforcement officers.

The bulldozer can clear a roadside in hours.

It cannot create a livelihood.

That responsibility remains with governance.

Lanre Ogundipe, Public Affairs Analyst, former President, Nigeria and Africa Union of Journalists, writes from Abuja.