In recent years, Lagos has mushroomed into Africa's biggest city, with a population estimated at over 20 million. Somehow, Makoko has remained untouched by the breakneck development occurring all around it in downtown Lagos. City authorities refuse to recognize the huge web of interlinking clusters of slum houses as a legitimate settlement and have withheld basic services such as electricity, water, schools, and hospitals from the community.

Assisted by local vigilante groups, the baale (or chieftains) of Makoko make decisions  to ensure law and order, and private enterprise takes care of the rest. Like any other neighborhood, Makoko has private schools, health clinics, traditional healers, restaurants, hair salons, churches, photo studios, and tailor shops. Ironically, water - clean water - poses the greatest challenge for this floating city. Clean water is available for a fee from local businesses. Worryingly for a community of fishermen, the polluted waters in Lagos Bay and nearby are increasingly devoid of fish, and frozen fish imported from Europe has come to replace locally sourced produce.

With Nigeria's economy powering ahead and ever more money flooding into Lagos, the soggy ground beneath Makoko is now valued in the billions of dollars, and city authorities are getting serious about clearing the slum for development. Yet three attempts -in 2005, 2010, and 2012 - backed by armed police, have so far proved incapable of dislodging this tight-knit community. People were given 72 hours to vacate their premises, and bulldozers were brought in to tear down the rickety structures, but locals generally return to Makoko, even if a boat is their only shelter.

2015, Nigeria