Something fresh and new seem to be happening in Lagos, that humming and rumbling urban jungle that is the commercial capital of Nigeria. Taxi drivers doing the Murtala Mohammed International Airport and the domestic terminal road, wax lyrical about the actions of their 2 years old Action Congress Governor Babatunde Fasola.

A common theme in their tale is his rapid and wholesome completion of previously "abandoned" projects that had, most probably, been used by successive governments as open windows for awarding contracts in order to loot the State's treasury. Some of those projects and problems had been in Lagos for over two decades; and become similar to incurable cancers because they also severely hurt public welfare and sense of decent and healhty living. There is also the effort to beautify some parts of the sprawling metropolis with paved sidewalks and newly planted trees.

More recently, Oshodi considered by many to be the heaving heart of Lagos is wearing a new look. Oshodi represented gallant efforts by thousands of underclass immigrants to invent means of subsistence for themselves. The sordid environment that constituted Oshodi was not captured by merely stating that its inhabitants "lived on less that a dollar a day!". That monetary measure hid the aesthetic violence inflicted on inhabitants by rain-soaked, garbage-carpeted, human waste-infested earth on which people walked, stood and sat for up to ten hours daily. The moral decay, mind-bending filth and stench, and bodily harm that people confronted on a daily basis as the price of survival, was never captured in that monetised expression of the people's terrible living condition. Oshodi also aroused fears in this sector because it had remained unseen by successive Lagos State governments.

In tackling it, therefore, the new-broom government in Lagos State deserves commendation by all. That it had not only given notices to its inhabitants to move out but had pushed forward datelines in response to appeals, is also to be commended. Often such compaints roll into the so-called "Nigerian factor", as "sharp" individuals bribe officials to ignore such directives until another administration comes in.Too often appeals are not heard because victims are the poor, politically voiceless orphans who as Fela sang, had become those who are forever suffering and smiling the success of bribe-givers earns contempt for governance in the minds of the public, and persons who either believe in reform or respect government directives are made to look like fools. Those who suffer and smile debase citizenship and become fertile soil for failed governance.That new-broom Lagos State officials finally moved in after exhausting its listening capital, and bulldozed Oshodi out of its past history is, therefore, also another commendable measure for restoring dignity to purposeful governance.

While these commendations are deserved, it must be recalled that past officials of past Lagos State governments allowed Oshodi to emerge, grow and become cancerous. The new-broom sweep must also go back into government files, track down offenders (including those who may have taken bribes so that they would gain from failing as urban planners and adminstrators), and roll out severe punishments as means of deterence. One such punishment should be people-based. Lagosians should gather in neighbourhoods and have such offenders brought out for open and communal rebuke. Such measures would build public participation behind the drive to invent and root a new civilization in Lagos. It would also have a demonstration effect across other States.

Finally, the Lagos State government should also build on Oshodi's fall by generating among its architects, designers of environments, artists, youths and community activists, a new movement for urban beauty and mind and soul-building urban housing designs and spaces. For too long the notion of soulless and depressing 'cement-and-roof' structures have dominated housing in Nigeria's urban centres. Notions of freedom, collective happpiness, community and intellectual creativity and versatility have been absent. "Eko for Show" should lead the way here if that slogan must continue to have meaning. Anything short of that is likely to make so little impact, as to eventually disappear as the "lawless" notions of Lagos reassert itself.