Once upon a time, when men were still in romance with nature, the lagoon nourished then social, commercial and even political being of the city and people of Lagos.
– Jahman Anikulapo, 2005
Growing up in the ’60s on the Lagos Island was an unmatched experience, an unadulterated life of bliss. My neighborhood, Popo Aguda (Brazilian Quarters), was a melting pot of ethnic nationalities and nationals, all in peaceful co-habitation that also respected the rights of the indigenous people, considerate of their culture and their social sensibilities. It was the heart of entertainment and played home to many great Nigerians.
Festivals in Lagos – of those days – were something! Fante in the Brazilian Quarters, Eyo with its roots in Isale Eko, Gelede, MeBoi, and every other excuse to celebrate. It was fun to be a Lagosian and we wore our badge with pride and honour.
The houses, especially in Popo Aguda, were just pure beauties, quaint little Portuguese architecture imported from Brazil that had folks coming from all over just to gaze at. They were well maintained. The compounds, Agbole, were large and mazy, housing different arms of the larger family. Yes, the gutters wove through the compound and cars were parked outside on the streets. I have heard people who came from very distant lands to make Lagos home sneer and turn their noses up at the ‘dirt’ of Lagosians and the ‘dirty’ family compounds and I am able to do nothing else but smile. They seem to forget that this is the village of Lagosians, it just left them behind and went to become a metropolis. I have been fortunate to have travelled through the length and breath of Nigeria and I honestly could not tell the difference between the filth in family compounds in Enugu, Port Harcourt, Ibadan, Ilorin, Kano, Maiduguri and how they are superior to Lagos. The commerce, like honey to ants, drew everyone from everywhere and made Lagos what it became.
I can prove it and you can confirm it. Every street in Lagos had at least one big almond tree under the shades of which we all used to hang out away from the blaze of the scorching sun. All over Lagos, there were men and women health and sanitation workers who, EVERY morning, went through the city, sweeping and cleaning gutter. I do mean clean gutters, scrub it, flush it with a lot of water till it became so clean that we children floated our paper boats in the clean water that flowed in them and it was not a bother to anyone that we could catch anything. Another team went round inspecting each home and compound and people were summoned to the local government office and penalized for any health and sanitation infraction. Folks took trouble to keep their homes clean.
That was the Lagos I grew up in. Ask anyone or take the trouble of going to the City Hall
to check the records. No, Lagos was not a dirty place. We made it dirty, a dump heap.
I remember with an awkward mix of nostalgia and pain how we used to go from Bangbose to Campbell Street, on to McCarthy, Awolowo Road and the quieter, more secluded parts of Ikoyi with houses sitting on one acre properties, throwing stones at almond and pear fruits. Of course, we used to be chased away with threats of arrest and beating by the guards and that added to the thrill for us.
Now, Campbell, Catholic Mission on to Awolowo and their adjoining streets are one huge, writhing market and the houses in old Ikoyi are all gone, giving way to mammoth obscenities, sticking into the former pristine skies like accusatory fingers but no one seems to be taking any note of their monologue in the stampede to rape the land.
EKO ended at Victoria Island at Okun Apese near where Eko Hotel sits now with Maroko just over the horizon, a reminder of the reality of life to those who lived in posh Ikoyi and Victoria Island then. The magnificent Bar Beach was ours. We held picnics and celebrated festivals there and what excitement it was preparing to go to the beach! The more that one kilometer trek from Ahmadu Bello Way where the buses dropped us off to the water was never a deterrent.
But that was before the caterpillars and low-loaders moved in to dredge Osborne, destroy the Ikoyi Park where we used to play so they could create Park View, fill the stretch that became the Lekki slum to make a home for the greedy noveau riche and not quite satisfied, manufactured Banana Island to make more homes for those who know little about science or history. Or maybe they just never cared.
AJAH was a village, separate from Lagos and it took a day to make a return journey there from Lagos on those beach roads along the Atlantic.
But enough of nostalgia or we will depress ourselves into helpless surrender. We should look at now and interrogate what the future portends.
In classic Trumpesque style, the city and state seems to be in blissful denial of the realities and facts of climate change. I await a coherent argument that the creation of those estates on Osborne Road, Lekki, and others have absolutely no effect on our waters and the way they behave these days. Let someone educate me that all the trees we lost on the Lagos Island, Victoria Island, Ebute Metta and other parts of old Lagos have no bearing on the extreme heat and that the volume of improperly managed waste we generate does not impact our lives directly.
We must be truthful and admit that leaders like Raji Rasaki, Buba Marwa and others up to Akinwunmi Ambode have done more harm to this incredible state than an all-out war ever could. I must be quick to remove Tunde Fashola from that list. He seemed to have focused a lot of his energy on the recovery of the Lagos he knew. Maybe because he is a Lagosian and grew up knowing and understanding those things. Little wonder his slogan was ‘Eko o ni baje’.
You may not have noticed, but in the entire Lagos metropolis, there is not a single, truly low density neighborhood. We used to have three – Ikoyi, Victoria Island and GRA, Ikeja. Victoria Island is one mass of an office complex, GRA is a market and Ikoyi probably has a higher population now than Surulere which itself is one of the more embarrassing disasters of property management.
By the way, they are still creating more disasters in Oworonsoki, at the end of the Third Mainland Bridge and if you are able to look beyond your personal sentiments, you will probably notice that there is more land-filling going on beyond Park View. You can see it jutting into the water from the Lekki-Ikoyi Bridge.
The rape continues. While other cities of the world are engaging in city renewals, we are busy destroying ours in a vain attempt to prove to God knows who, that we too have arrived and we can compare with New York. Lagos does not have any true and healthy recreation anymore. Between Bar Beach – apologies, there is no Bar Beach anymore, just Eko Atlantic Ciity! – and Epe, there is not a single public beach where our children can go to frolic in the sand and be excited by the boom and wash of the waters of the great Atlantic.
Don’t take my word for it, take a trip to old Bar Beach, Oniru, Elegushi and on till you get to Eleko in Ibeju for a time on the beach and see if you will not be wrestled down for extortionist access fees. In a city surrounded by water, it is sinful for the people not to have free access to the beach. Even in more capitalist cities of the world, public beaches are everywhere and you do not have to save or burst a bank to go.
It is a shame, what they have done to Lagos.
The city of Lagos and sister cities of Badagry and Epe play host to some of the most important historical sites in Nigeria if not the West African sub-region, yet no one comes to visit, to look, to learn, to understand.
My grandmother told me that Herbert Macaulay used to live in Alagbon House on Broad Street but there is no trace of that house anymore and therefore no history. He was a Lagosian.
Henry Carr was a Lagosian and he owned such a huge library that he willed it to the University College, Ibadan. Like Herbert Macaulay, his house was also close to Tinubu Square. I doubt if anyone remembers where in that constantly moving marketplace now.
In other climes, the entire Lagos Island and Ebute Metta would be one mass of tourist destinations, attracting scholars and the curious. The story may have been different if someone understood the importance of the homes and history of some of the most important Nigerians, the symbols of colonialism that dot the Broad Street/Marina axis, the many palaces all over the Island, not too different from the palaces of Venice, the Egungun, MeBoi, Fante, Gelede and other festivals. And please let no one sermonize me about idol worshiping. I am Christian too. Indonesia, Malaysia, Greece and several other countries live off such tourist attractions. It is what most of us gawk at on our first visit to London.
Someone just has to take back this city!
If the government of Lagos State could negotiate the take-over of some of the federal buildings and assets in Lagos, why on earth does it seem so winded and impossible to take over all and turn them around as only Lagos is able to do? After all, it is our history, our reality!
Honestly, we have to take back this city.
It is not the cannibalization of Ikoyi that we need, not the development of real estate at Banana Island and Park View that so negatively impact on the environment and our lives nor the cruel denial of access to basic good life at Bar Beach that proves we are modern. It is in fact those things we are destroying in the name of development.
Someone has to think of taking this city back.
Enter from the Ibadan-Lagos expressway and drive all the way to Lekki through Ikorodu Road. It is one very long market. Someone is selling something somewhere on that stretch and everyone who used to live around there have either been driven further into the crowded interiors, making them more crowded and dirty or to Mowe, Arepo, Ikorodu, Agbowa and so on. No one lives in Lagos anymore. Go to Surulere, any street in that modern city and the surprise will be finding a few people who still live on any sane street. They have been driven to the fringes of humanity or forced into suicide. The stretch from Ibeju Lekki all the way to the Lagos Island is a twenty-four hour business district that no one apologizes for. And you expect rents to remain within reason? Agbara to Orile is the same. The manufacturing companies along Oshodi Expressway and Ogba Industrial Estate have become mere warehouses rented out to traders who import all sorts of scams. Have we become such lazy and unimaginative people that all we can draw from this city and state is crass trade?
Won’t someone just stand up and take this city back?
I dream of the day when it will become law that it is criminal to trade in a residential area and an offence to cut a tree. A day has to come when new developments must meet minimum town planning standards and those standards are firmly enforced. I can see a city that gleams proudly with the colours and restoration of its rich past where my children’s children can go to learn of their city’s amazing past, the Oba’s palace will be open for tourists’ visits, they can hang out with the neighborhood boys as Omo Area without fear, just be proud happy Lagosians. That cannot be too much to ask if anyone is asking for my vote.
It is because of what Lagos has become that I commit myself to the advocacy that each one of us must vote selfishly, voting only for ourselves, our own good and happiness.
This election, I am watching and listening to both voice and body language and I will vote only for the man or woman who speaks the language that promises to take this Lagos back, damn it!
Just Bimbo Musing…
