Joseph Omowa
5 December 2007
opinion
Iju — The vision for Lagos development as recently propounded by its current Governor, through the implementation of some projects in respect of improved power supply, integrated transportation, road improvement, solid wastes management, provision of water, promotion of tourism and the creation of new business districts, is worthy of commendation.
Governor Fashola further promised to make Lagos a dynamic city by making its rejuvenation and re-design meet its modem needs and eliminate its sprawling slums, its traffic congestion, urban poverty, crime and filth. The solutions proffered by the State Governor although good intentioned, they seem to be very simplistic and ordinary considering the peculiarity and complexity of the planning problems confronting the city.
Lagos remains an urban settlement beset with numerous problems, part of which have to do with over population, traffic chaos, extensive slummy developments and conversion of under-bridges into residential apartments, lack of space for development; so much so that if care is not taken the city would be overwhelmed by these problems making it's collapse inevitable. The complexity of the problems buffeting Lagos metropolis can be explained from the failure of the supervising authorities to imbibe the elementary principles of town and country planning for the past decades. It is becoming rather too late to bring about the necessary changes in the manner propounded by his Excellency, and unless fundamental changes are made, the physical position of Lagos will continue to deteriorate.
With the continuous improvement in the science of settlement planning, proactive developers have always ensured that settlements planned de novo are cheaper and less expensive to handle as against rectification, re-planning and re-development of slummy areas such as in Lagos which had been neglected for decades. In terms of human inconvenience, materials and financial out lay; slum clearance or urban redevelopment cause a lot of hardship in affected settlements as numerous inhabitants are displaced. Therefore the existing slummy developments in our cities, apart from portraying missed opportunities at settlement planning, can not be easily rectified unless the services of experienced town and country planners are secured.
It is not easy to plan a settlement afflicted with such myriad of problems as over-population, slummy developments, traffic chaos and housing congestion in an environment that parades land shortage, inadequate infra structural services and widespread unemployment of able-bodied youths among others. Lagos, the former Federal Capital still continues to play the role of the commercial nerve centre of Nigeria, capital of Lagos State and the entre-port of Nigeria both by air and sea.
Lagos as a coastal city handles the preponderant part of goods exported out and imported into Nigeria. Its location at sea level explains the frequent sea incursion into the Lagos and Victoria Islands. Rather than utilize the lagoons as veritable means of water transport, they are misused as receptacles for refuse. The failure to handle the disposal of market refuse, human wastes and other household dirts carefully, which are dumped in the drains have caused widespread flooding. It is estimated that Lagos generates over 9,000 metric tons of waste daily. Due to non-existent or in-effective development control functions, numerous houses are built to block drainage channels resulting in greater flooding and causing the canals to grow weeds thereby becoming difficult to de-silt.
Lagos city parades an enormous population of unemployed youths and a land that is incapable of expansion, the influx of job seekers and traders from all ethnic groups making up Nigeria with a lot of other immigrants from the west African Coast is responsible for the congestion posed by the presence of over 15 million on a piece of land that is only about 3,700 sq kilometer. It is worth mentioning that the large population of jobless youths who have constituted themselves into miscreants, armed robbers, cheats, urchins and lay bouts has constituted an embarrassment to the government. How does the government wish to restore normalcy to this much-ravaged city?
Lagos as a commercial centre will continue to playa very unique role in the development of Nigeria. Its problems are the creation of all the states of Nigeria, and as such every sector has a role to play in finding solutions to them. For example, some towns in Ogun State particularly Ota, Ifo and Agbara and some others have merged with Lagos City forming an expansive conurbation thereby complicating the planning and management problems. As most people perceive Lagos as a land of opportunities, job seekers from every state of the Federation migrate into Lagos every day thereby complicating the housing, traffic and infrastructural problems. If solutions must be found, definite efforts should be made to reduce or stop such influx from the states. This explains why there should be a National Development plan and each state should be encouraged to cater for its citizens so as to reduce the heavy burden being borne by Lagos State. If employment opportunities are provided for the youths in their various states, this will reduce the large scale daily, movement of the youths abroad and to Lagos State, therefore while Lagos is striving to plan to accommodate its inhabitants, other states should be encouraged to plan for its own citizens.
We must not ignore the possible effects of climatic change on Lagos located on the sea coast and fronted by some creeks and lagoons. It is common knowledge that natural disasters can have devastating effects anywhere just as hurricane Katsina and others devastated the US Gulf Coast sometimes ago. Since Lagos is a low-lying city at the Atlantic coast of West Africa, the risk of losing the city to the sea can not be ignored; hence the Federal and State Governments must be proactive in their actions. Just as the whole of the Niger Delta is vulnerable to sea incursions, the authorities should fashion remedial measures to save that city and other settlements from the perceived and known consequences of climatic changes. The peculiarity of Lagos in terms of shortage of land for expansion purposes can not be overlooked, hence the congestion in terms of housing, shops and markets, traffic and other land uses competing for limited land space. The dominance of Ikoyi, Lagos and Victoria Islands as the major residential areas of the elites and the dominant commercial, business administrative Industrial areas is responsible for the unidirectional movement of vehicles to and from work daily resulting in unprecedented traffic congestion. Is there sufficient space to reverse this trend, and can the authorities build sufficient central business districts to serve the needs of the numerous residential blocks in Lagos? The efforts to introduce the Bus Rapid Transit is well-intentioned, but since Lagosians still prefer to ride their cars to schools and places of work, the traffic chaos has therefore been compounded. By reserving a lane to the BRT, the traffic congestion has become unprecedented. Since the road space is inadequate to handle the available vehicular traffic, the need to diffuse the means of transportation, through the use of water, underground train and the construction of wider roads, if space can be found, should be explored. Let us recall that the abortion of the underground rail-way project in 1983 by the military junta has deprived Lagos of a unique opportunity to diversity its transportation network system, which is almost impossible to implement now.
The uniqueness of Lagos as an unplanned city is characterized by its dense population, over-crowded slummy residential apartments, chaotic traffic congestion, flood-prone environment, crime-infested ,city, widespread street trading and infusion of every residential apartment with shops and numerous other problems. How can Lagos be made a truly useful megacity that would function properly like other modem cities of comparable status in the world? All hands should be on deck to save Lagos city from imminent disaster and collapse due to a gamut of avoidable problems which are human creations.
Although the megacity status being targeted for Lagos is already being celebrated whereas this is not an event achievable in a jiffy, but a process ofyears of careful planning and re-planning, development and re-development. The neglect of the city for decades will definitely render it difficult and almost impossible to achieve this, what might probably happen is the continuation of traffic chaos, and congestion, housing slums and the conflicts in human movements and other essential landuses.
Omowa wrote from Iju, Ondo State
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