Nigeria evicted 800,000 Abuja residents: report

LAGOS (Reuters) - Nigeria evicted more than 800,000 people from their homes in Abuja as part of a four-year drive to restore order to the capital's chaotic urban planning, housing rights groups said in a report released on Thursday.

Residents were evicted without consultation or adequate notice, according to the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE), which fights forced evictions worldwide, and Nigeria's Social and Economic Rights Action Centre (SERAC).

The evictions, carried out between 2003 and 2007, often involved the complete demolition of houses in Abuja and nearby villages, the groups said.

The mass displacements were launched by the former minister for Abuja, Nasir el-Rufai, as part of his drive to return the city to its original master-plan. His actions are being investigated by Nigeria's Senate.

"(Rufai) created a myth about the Abuja Master Plan to convince people that the plan justified and necessitated the systematic violation of the housing rights of hundreds of thousands of people," COHRE's Deanna Fowler, who helped compile the report, said in a statement.

Abuja was originally designed to be better organized than the commercial capital Lagos, which is regarded as one of the world's most chaotic cities and was once described by former President Olusegun Obasanjo as a jungle.

But the plans for orderly development were abandoned by previous administrations, leading to the growth of an unplanned urban sprawl on the periphery of the city.

SERAC executive director Felix Morka said evictions were not the solution and advised the government to instead upgrade the settlements in consultation with those affected.

Fowler said the evictions not only made people homeless and destitute, but also vulnerable to violence, theft and rape.

"People have lost their access to water and sanitation facilities, health care centers, and schools, and have been forced to move further from sources of employment," said Fowler.

In some cases, Abuja officials prevented residents from retrieving their possessions from their homes and used teargas, beatings and other forms of violence to chase away evictees who had no access to legal remedies.

El-Rufai defended his actions to the Senate committee investigating the demolitions earlier this month, saying he had no apology to make for his actions.

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(Reporting by Tume Ahemba; Editing by Jon Boyle)