Alphonse is one 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 Alphonse, whose husband disappeared during the chaos, leaving her and her six children to seek shelter in wooden canoes on the Lagos Lagoon. "We are just managing from hand to mouth to survive."

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The spate of demolitions comes just weeks after 193 nations agreed the New Urban Agenda at a U.N. summit in Ecuador, which aims to guide the growth of cities in the 21st century as well as enshrine humanitarian rights for the urban poor.

Yet Lagos' government will only plunge its poorest residents deeper into poverty if it pushes ahead with evictions, said Sola Tayo of the London-based think tank Chatham House.

"Lagos is caught between the drive to modernise and capitalise on its megacity status ... and the basic ability to provide decent housing for all socioeconomic groups," Tayo said.

"Poverty will not just disappear through beautification."

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Originally a fishing camp for people who moved from Lagos' suburbs and nearby coastal towns, the Otodo Gbame slum expanded to include schools, churches, and even private health centres.

Now, only a few shacks remain, and people are cooking, eating and bathing in the open, among the ruins and rubble.

Residents of the slum, mainly fishermen from the linguistic minority, the Egun, filmed the fires on their mobile phones and said police had used tear gas to drive them toward the water.

Many jumped into canoes on the lake in panic as police fired shots into the air. A dozen people, including women and children, drowned, said community youth leader Celestine Ahisu.

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Since the razing of the Otodo Gbame slum, many of the homeless have demonstrated outside the state governor's office.

Despite their pleas, and opposition from rights groups, the state has adopted a hard line stance towards slum dwellers.

Lagos governor Akinwunmi Ambode announced in October that all shanty towns around the city's creeks and waterways were to be demolished, identifying them as hideouts for criminals.

Yet the demolition of Otodo Gbame follows years of development in the area by investors who have built apartments and shopping centres, pushing out fishing communities, said local legal campaign group Justice and Empowerment Initiatives.

While the authorities and residents point the blame at each other over the clearing of the slum, it was destroyed just days after slum communities, including Otodo Gbame, secured a High Court order to stop the state pushing ahead with evictions.

Lagos state government said the razing was a result of clashes between the Egun and Yorubas, the major ethnic groups in the community, while police denied destroying homes and said they had arrested several people for setting fire to them.