Lagos: the survival of the determined

UNESCO Courier, June, 1999 by Amy Otchet

Lagos is a city where near anarchy prevails rather than government. Lagosins respond to the chaos by relying on their own ingenuity to get by

It's rush-hour near the stadium in Lagos where Nigeria has just lost a football match. Streams of young men run through the street to let off steam as crowds dive into the tangle of battered yellow minibuses. A dozen passengers pack into one bus, and the driver grinds into gear, lurching at full throttle to gain a six-inch lead over his competitor. The side-view mirror has to be pulled in for the bus to squeeze through. Girls balancing bags of water on their heads edge their way through the traffic to vend their wares. Toilet brushes, cutting shears, smoked fish, hankies, inflatable globes and even a steering wheel are sold by boys as the coil of traffic becomes ever more ensnared. But the action never stops for a moment. That's Lagos - a city that moves, miraculously, against the odds.

A mighty magnet

It's difficult to find the centre, let alone the logic, of this city reputed to be the most dangerous in Africa. Three bridges connect about 3,500 square kilometres of lagoon, islands, swamp and the mainland, where unlit highways run past canyons of smouldering garbage before giving way to dirt streets weaving through 200 slums, their sewers running with raw waste. So much of the city is a mystery. No one even knows for sure the size of the population - officially it's 6 million, but most experts estimate it at 10 million (see box) - let alone the number of murders each year, the rate of HIV infection or the quantities of drugs that pass through the port of Apapa. Corruption is endemic at all levels. A bus driver doesn't even slow down to slip a few bills into a policeman's open palm to avoid being pulled over. The rich barricade themselves on two fortress islands, removed from the mainland, where two-thirds of the population live below the poverty line.

But to look upon Lagos simply as the archetypal urban nightmare is to miss the point. Lagos, as the economic, cultural and, until 1991, political powerhouse of mighty Nigeria, is, for all its faults, also a magnet pulling some 300,000 people every year. The streets aren't all paved with concrete, let alone gold, but Lagos appears as an El Dorado in the poverty-stricken countryside where work can be found and dreams of the good life can come true. In reality, most find it a daily struggle to make ends meet, yet an iron-clad conviction that those dreams will materialize one day gives Lagos a vibrant beat.

If you ask Lagosins about the glue that holds their city together they speak of endurance. For some, it is a capacity to withstand suffering. This helps to explain the much talked-about boom in evangelism. "People are seeking spiritual solutions to their economic problems," says Pastor Ebenezer Babajide, who opened his Jesus Generation Gospel Church last year in the annex of a nursery school. But there is a drive that goes beyond simply the will to survive.

"In Nigeria, there is a spirit to aggressively pursue the good life, which you won't find elsewhere on the continent," says Felix Morka, executive director of the non-governmental Social and Economic Rights Action Centre. The oil boom beginning in the 1970s raised expectations for a better life which people managed to hang on to, even after the economy took a nose-dive in the 1980s and the World Bank's structural adjustment policies made life more difficult. "It's as if people are struggling to reverse the economic downturn as individuals," says Morka. "Everyone wants capital to start their own business. This industriousness is very Nigerian but the struggle is even more fierce and stark in Lagos where there is such a concentration of pressures, resources and population."

Wheelbarrows rented out as beds

Instead of exploding under pressure, Lagosins have pumped that much more out of the informal structure, which Morka calls "an incredible renewable resource that has been the military government's greatest ally." This underground economy enables at least half the city's people to make ends meet. By taking the edge off economic hardship, the informal sector cuts down the potential for political upheaval.

Typical of the informal sector is the professor who earns 5,000 naira, equivalent to about $55 a month, and takes on a second or even a third job. Perhaps he opens a small food store to pay for his daughter's tuition fees of $85 per semester. In this vast black market, vegetables and fruit flow across the border from neighbouring Benin, their entry eased by bribing customs officials who earn about $55 a month. When the government cuts domestic fuel supplies to meet export demands, the informal sector fills the tanks of taxis and buses to keep Lagos moving. Behind this informal sector lies a powerful if not desperate spirit of initiative - wheelbarrows are rolled out of a construction site at night to serve as rented beds at 20 cents a shot for homeless seeking shelter under an overhang. When rain makes a market run with mud, kids wait with buckets of water to wash shoppers' feet for a few naira.