An unidentified woman stands near the rubble of her demolished house Thursday in Chika area of Abuja, Nigeria. Soldiers and police have evicted thousands from Lagos neighborhoods.

Lagos, Nigeria ? Police arrived before dawn Friday, smashing through a gate and breaking down apartment doors as they forced thousands of civil servants and their families from a recently privatized government complex.

It was just one in a series of mass evictions in Africa’s most populous nation that Amnesty International has called a “human rights scandal.”

The 1,004 Housing Estate, home to 8,000 people and sold to a company run by a former Nigerian army chief, is one of several government properties being privatized as part of a wider package of free market reforms. President Olusegun Obasanjo has pushed ahead with the reforms since he was re-elected in 2003, despite strong criticism because of mass layoffs of civil servants and the liberalization of gasoline prices, which has contributed to sharp price increases.

The move on 1,004 was the third mass eviction of civil servants this week in Lagos.

Tenants of other Lagos apartment blocks have been given notice that they would also be evicted.