Lagos, Nigeria: The City That Keeps Growing
While Sub-Saharan Africa has not urbanized as quickly as other regions, this trend is beginning to change. Although the map in Figure 6.17 is ten years old, it shows some highly-populated areas that will likely become denser. In 2022, Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo on the Congo River, and Lagos, the Nigerian coastal city, are the 14th and 15th largest cities in the world. From 2021–2022 they grew more than any other city in the top 20.
The African Cities Research Consortium was created to address the challenges of Africa's rapidly growing cities.
Read this article by architect Ola Uduku and Taibat Lawanson, an urban planner. They discuss some issues city planners in Lagos must address.
In 1991, Nigeria moved its capital from Lagos to Abuja to expand economic opportunities in the country's interior. (In 1960, Brazil moved its capital from Rio de Janeiro to Brasilia for the same reason.) Geographers consider Lagos a megacity because it is growing so rapidly that it absorbs the land areas in the adjoining state and national boundaries.
We also call Lagos a primate city because it has nearly four times as many people as the next largest Nigerian city, Kano, and 12 times as many people as Abuja. Its economy more than quadruples its nearest rivals –- across Nigeria and West Africa – in terms of productivity, capital, and infrastructure.
The challenges of governing Lagos, the city that keeps growing
From its historical origins as a fishing village and the site of a pepper farm to today's bustling metropolis, Lagos has evolved into a complex agglomeration of people, settlements, and vested interests.
As the economic powerhouse of Nigeria and West Africa, Lagos is projected to become the most populous city in Africa within the next 50 years, reaching a population of 100 million from 15 million today. If recent waves of migration are anything to go by – from those seeking economic opportunities or escaping the climate crisis and insurgency in other parts of Nigeria – the projections may be underestimated.
Governing a city like Lagos is not for the fainthearted. It is a city that is always growing and has deep-seated socioeconomic inequalities.
We are part of the African Cities Research Consortium, a new initiative committed to addressing critical challenges in 13 cities in sub-Saharan Africa. Our recent publication sheds some light on Lagos's complexities and why managing the city is a challenge in itself.
Governance Struggles
Lagos faces many challenges; some are critical to understanding why metropolitan governance is so difficult.
Firstly, the geographical definition of Lagos has become nebulous over time. The city's urban land area continually expands to absorb adjoining state and now even national boundaries.
It is difficult to gain accurate data for short and long-term planning policies.
Secondly, the city's governance structures—from local to state level—are unclear and don't necessarily align in the expected ways. The local government system is essentially an appendage of the state government. It lacks autonomy and the technical and fiscal capacity required to perform its constitutional functions.
Power Dynamics
Lagos has the historical legacy of being Nigeria's longest-established capital city. It started as a protectorate under the British colonial government and became the capital of the colony and later of independent Nigeria. It withstood the subsequent military coups, remaining the capital until the movement of the federal capital territory to Abuja in 1991.
Despite losing its administrative capital status, Lagos remains Nigeria's preeminent economic powerhouse. The city's economy more than quadruples its nearest rivals in productivity, capital, and infrastructure across Nigeria and elsewhere in West Africa.
Its historical status and ongoing economic power provide the background for the city's uneasy and often tense relationship with the national government, where the power, revenue, and resourcing decisions are located.
Furthermore, Lagos has a history of different political parties controlling different levels of government – those that run the state and those that run the nation. As a result, policies and fiduciary allocations are often "lost" between conflicting governance systems.
The local government system is severely incapacitated. Instead, informal governance institutions have an immense influence on everyday life in the city.
Inequality and Informality
For the average Lagosian, these conditions result in a lived experience that delivers poorly on infrastructure and quality of life. Yet the city remains one of the most expensive places in Africa to live in.
The poor residents of Lagos live in sprawling informal settlements within the city core or create new ones in the peripheral areas. The rest can be found in several gated communities throughout the city. In both instances, self-governance is common.
Taxation from the local to the state level is poorly managed. Basic services, such as primary healthcare and public education, are under-resourced.
There's an intricate web of informal governance systems that hold sway at the local levels. This results in a class of powerbrokers who oversee infrastructure provision in the city. Very few people or groups have the agency to engage with these gatekeepers to development.
Marginalized Youth
Additionally, Lagos is a city of marginalized young people. The average age in Nigeria is 18.1 years. However, many young citizens lack education, employment, or training. In Lagos, as in other cities, young people are confronted with poor governance, unemployment or underemployment, police brutality, and a high cost of living.
The frustration of these young Lagos residents is visceral. Frustration-aggression and relative deprivation theories suggest that individuals turn aggressive when there are impediments to their success, especially when basic material needs are unmet. The #EndSARS protests that paralyzed the city for days in October 2020, ending in bloodshed, showed what can happen when such frustration plays out in the streets.
The government's inability to investigate what actually happened and assign blame has further exacerbated the underlying tensions in the city.
People Power
Certain things are clear about all of these challenges: the immense potential of the Lagos economy, the hope in the hearts of migrants that Lagos offers opportunities for a better future, and the community-driven city-making practices of residents.
Our research at the African Cities Research Consortium seeks to investigate how these factors interact with complex governance frameworks. By doing this, we aim to identify which structures have successfully navigated the complex layers of Lagos governance, particularly the local structures that support and deliver physical and social infrastructure for communities.
From these analyses, we hope to examine how bottom-up systems in Lagos – and ultimately in cities across Africa – can be better supported to deliver development and infrastructural change in a challenging and complex landscape.
Source: Ola Uduku and Taibat Lawanson, https://theconversation.com/the-challenges-of-governing-lagos-the-city-that-keeps-growing-175753
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.