mega projections. future projections.
lagos is huge and getting huger… it is a megacity balooning out of the oil wealth of Nigeria drawing millions.
second most populous city in Africa was the capital of Nigeria till 1991 when it was transferred to the purpose built Abuja.
Nigeria is the eighth most populous country in the world. over 150 million. it is a regional power. with a growing economy.
lagos was a Yoruba settlement who seem to have been the traditional custodians of the area for quite a few millennia actually... lagos is the portugese name.
history is like this.
it was a centre for the slave trade from 1404-about 1900 when local people sought help from the british who had banned slave trading in 1807. it became a british colony in 1861. the rest of Nigeria was claimed in 1887 when Britain claimed a sphere of influence in west Africa. . lagos became the capital of the british colony that they had (up)started in 1914..
independence came in 1960. (ahem)
several back-to-back military coups-d' état s and civil wars later, Nigeria joined opec in the 1970s the income immensely benefiting the military clique.
sani abacha was the most brutal of the several military dictators they had to have. many harrowing stories.. but nigeria is ultimately not an unhappy story.
ethnic violence, corruption, militarism religious sectarianism.... same as, same as. post-colonial military dictatorship.. but.. it contrasts to others...
nigeria is rich in mineral resources in addition to oil there are serious agricultural resources and a developing manufacturing base. ( they send out a lot of really annoying scam emails but lets not gripe.. hehehe)
as for lagos, theyre calling it a ‘conurbation’. its population has ballooned to around 8 million but is only guessed at.
you’d think it would be an unhappy story.. but it apparently isn’t.. people flock there from the poverty-stricken, rigidly conservative countryside. they come with energy and ambition…. men, women and children.
a lot of the city is not serviced with anything like water or drainage… there is supposed to be something like one ‘police man’ per 1000 people
much of it is a huge shanty town…but.. for the people it is a city of opportunity. the fast growing megacity is where the booming real-economy is…..
while it has few formal jobs, it has a thriving underground economy. hustling.. bartering.. odd jobs.. the people are said to be either business-savvy or not there at all.
there is a breakdown of traditional order and infrastructure but there is a transformation of it into a productive urban form. trafficjams become markets.. defunct infrastructure finds some transformed use..
innovation combines with new models like microfinance to yield dramatic improvement in peoples’ lives.
lagos maybe a vision of the future for many places. maybe even some that now enjoy a much higher standard of living. i get the feeling its a place where water soon finds its true level.
change, the buddha reminds us, is the only constant.. it is coming to a place near you.. it maybe that mega cities are the modus it is gonna take.
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