Daily Independent (Lagos)
5 November 2008
The poor arrive in Lagos to escape the poverty of rural Nigeria and nearby countries; the rich come to the city to escape the violence in other parts of the country. About 6,000 people move to Lagos everyday, according to estimates, adding to the already bursting population of about 15 million.
The United Nations (UN) estimates that the population of Lagos will swell to 25 million by 2015. What are the special attractions in Lagos? Can't these migrants look elsewhere for survival? group business editor, Rotimi Durojaiye, writes on the good and bad side of Lagos, the commercial hub of sub-Saharan Africa.
Lagos is a city of many superlatives. It has variously been deemed Africa's most traffic-plagued city; one of Africa's money and contrast-rich boomtowns; or the most populous and fastest growing mega city. Now, Lagos, the commercial hub of sub-Saharan Africa has a new title to add to its mantel, the most eXpensive city.
Ever since slaves were first shipped from Lagos to Europe and the Americas, the city has never lost its popularity.
But because of the rising price of oil, the declining United States dollar, the relocation of foreign workers from the oil-rich Niger Delta, large privatisation efforts and dash for the city's remaining plots, Lagos has remained a city that is creating wealth quickly and growing chaotically.
A recent study of the most eXpensive cities for eXpatriates by the consulting firm, Mercer, found that Lagos ranked 30th, taking it only slightly less costly than New York but considerably more eXpensive than Los Angeles, and Washington DC.
Even European cities like Stockholm and Barcelona, Spain, were found to be more affordable. In Lagos, the high prices are much more eye-popping because the average Nigerian survives on less than N100, a day.
Most of the economic activities in Lagos thrive on the Island. The Island anchors the city's economic activities and it is home to banks, consulates, oil and telecommunications companies.
Dinner for two, at an average restaurant on Lagos Island, costs more than N5, 000. A cocktail costs more than N10, 00. A boX of cereal costs N2, 000 at a supermarket. Hotel under N5, 000 are difficult to find.
In the aisles of glistening new malls, eXpatriates and wealthy Nigerians often buy N150, 000 watches and N250, 000 cell phones.
New BMWs, Mercedes-Benzes and Bentleys plod through grinding traffic, bumping over rocks and weaving around potholes.
Multi-million-dollar yachts speed up and down the creek separating Lagos Island from Mainland.
Apartment rents on the islands start at N350,000 a month, but rents of N500,000 to N650,000 a month are common, and renters are required to pay two or three years of rent in advance.
But high prices do not always mean high quality. The city was built to accommodate fewer than 100,000 residents, but it is now home to an estimated 14 million or more, according to the state government. So, no matter what your station in life is, it is impossible to avoid the city's traffic or its lack of reliable water and electricity. Most homes and businesses on the islands run on diesel-powered generators nearly 24 hours a day, resulting in thousands of dollars in energy bills.
Tayo Emden, 33, a British-educated Ghanaian who has lived in Lagos for five years as a director for Telecommunications Company, said the costs were just too high to stay.
"After living in London with colleagues, we thought Lagos would be nice and cushy, we're having second thoughts," Emden said.
"You used to get a lot of bang for your buck but that's not the case anymore."
Several efforts have been made to create economic hubs away from the islands to reduce traffic and lessen the burden, but none have been successful.
So, at least, three million commuters fight their ways through hours of traffic to the islands every day, many leave before 5 a.m. to beat the traffic and many do not return home until after 10 p.m.
Moreover, most Lagosians do not enjoy the privileges of the city's new wealth, and perhaps no economic division, cuts deeper than housing.
On the Islands, plots of 645 square feet sell for millions of naira, and houses built on the plots are sub-divided and rented out to wealthy Nigerians or eXpatriates whose companies do not bargain down.
Living in Lagos is tough, that's the bottom line," said Bola Sobande, the general manager of the popular Palms Shopping Mall. Nigerians are survivors. We survive against all odds. Until something else comes up, we'll just hang in there."
According to government officials, Lagos generates N10.030 billion a month and it hopes to keep or surpass the figure as time goes on. It is also aiming at becoming one of the 20 largest city economies by 2020.
Once a centre for Portuguese slave traders, then latter a British colony, Lagos is currently growing at the speed of eight percent, a year.
More than 70 percent of the city's residents live in informal housing, crammed into slums with no electricity or water; according to FeliX Morka, the eXecutive director of the Social and Economic Rights Action Centre, a local economic rights group.
"Only the super rich can compete in the market," Morka said. "Many people are looking for a small plot of land where they can build shack or to rent space in what are known as **I See You, You See Me** building with no facilities at all. That's what people can afford.
"The oil companies can afford to rent out huge compleXes for all their staff," Morka said, "so why would a landlord want to rent out to the Nigerian teacher who barely is even assured of a salary at the end of the month?"
Because of widespread corruption, the vast amounts of money coming in rarely trickle down in Nigeria. Still, more and more people stream into the city every day, drawn by the prospect of wealth absent from most of the rest of Nigeria.
"People are moving to Lagos because you can find work, you don't need to know anybody or have anything," said Francisco Abosede, the state commissioner for physical planning.
Early on a Sunday morning at the popular Sunday Market on Wempco Road, Ogba, Ikeja, as the rich and famous begin to stumble out of dubs and into the hazy light, they are quickly surrounded by dozens of young boys acting as informal parking attendants or hawking chewing gum, mints and phone cards. The boys are paid little mind, but if they are lucky, a small bill may be handed to them from behind the narrow slit of a tinted window of a departing BMW.
When General Ibrahim Babangida decreed the immediate relocation of the Nigerian government from Lagos to Abuja in 1992, many Nigerians thought that was the end of the glorious days of the city on the Atlantic.
SiXteen years later, Lagos is still bursting at its seams and life there has never been more eXciting.
Babangida, then military ruler, had lost the political support of the people of Lagos through his long-winding transition to civil rule, and was booed whenever he ventured out of his Dodan Barracks fortress.
He escaped from the open hostility in Lagos to seek relative peace in the new capital city, Abuja, which was then a vast construction yard.
Thousands of federal civil servants were forced to make a hurried and unplanned relocation to Abuja. Federal office buildings were abandoned to the mercy of looters. Lagos was shorn of power and influence, as property prices tumbled.
Abuja had nothing to offer them after office hours. They would fly back to Lagos either on Thursday evening or Friday morning and return to Abuja only on Monday morning.
It was those civil servants who brought to the attention of Lagosians the intangibles that gave the city, the largest in sub-Saharan Africa, its character. Suddenly the disorderliness, filth, noise and overcrowding became 'qualities' they longed for.
And so Lagos gained a new lease of life. The shock of desertion by government wore off and the people settled down to making money through other means to sustain their fast lifestyle.
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