There is No Space Left in Lagos City

Photo: Opeyemi Adisa, Unsplash

Navigating the streets of Lagos is an extreme sport. A certain kind of steeplechase involving the ability to dodge all kinds of vehicles — both stationary and mobile — man-made gutters and God-made potholes, the odd animal or two, and even human beings. In extreme cases, you’d also have to survive being kidnapped or robbed. A robbery could include theft of a phone, wallet or handbag, and the occasional body part, like a penis. If you’re unlucky, you could also lose your senses and find yourself miles away from your intended destination, confused and searching for a way to get back home.

Lagos is an immensely populated city. The population figure is so high that there is a running dispute between the National Population Commission and the Lagos government over how many people actually live here. As of 2016, the Commission estimated that Lagos had a population of over 21 million people, only slightly higher than the  state government’s estimated 17.5 million.

But whether 21 million or 17.5 million, Lagos continues to be the city that has convinced itself it is a country. With a landmass that is considerably small for the number of people living inside it, Lagos is a melting pot of cultures and ethnic groups that has now become the default representation of Nigeria to the world. Hundreds of people consistently move here for the proverbial “better life”. There is no guarantee any of them will find it.

In a 2016 press briefing, former governor Akinwunmi Ambode reportedly claimed that Lagos state receives an estimated 86 immigrants every minute. Those figures might seem a bit far-fetched, particularly when the statistical accuracy of whatever tool was used to measure it cannot be verified — after all, it’s not as if there is a dedicated border control agency responsible for documenting the names and details of everyone who’s migrated to Lagos via planes, trains, or automobiles — but it is an exaggeration that doesn’t entirely beat one’s imagination. Lagos is unarguably the most famous of all Nigeria’s states and the preferred destination for rural dwellers migrating to urban city life.

I was 26 when I moved to Lagos in 2018. But unlike the estimated thousand or so “green pasture” seekers flocking into this tiny coastal city, I didn’t just come armed with nothing but a suitcase and a dream. I had a job waiting for me, a recently completed master’s degree, a handful of friends to socialise with, and a grandmother whose home I could run to if I ever found myself stuck or stranded and unable to return to the familiar comfort of my father’s house in Abuja.

But Lagos is the kind of city you never get used to, no matter how many years you’ve lived here or how far and long your bloodlines and family ties run deep into the sand-filled land. There is an unfamiliarity that constantly welcomes you with each passing day. A fear that grabs hold of your neck and clings to your back every moment you walk out of your house. You feel it like a stray hair tingling the top of your ear. That feeling of an ant crawling over your skin. Your eyes know there is nothing there, but the goosebumps spreading over your body are proof that your mind was having a hard time believing it.

Each minute you spend in Lagos is lived with the knowledge that at any moment your life could change. A knowing that just one step, one word, one action in any direction, and nothing might be the same. There are no mundane or dull moments that carry on into another. Time folding over itself like the pages of a large and boring book. Every day lived in Lagos is like a new day with endless possibilities spread farther and wider than your wildest imagination. It is this hope that drives many here. The belief that the God who allowed a common bread seller to stumble into a photoshoot that changed her life would do the same for them.

Lagos city is a den of hopeful souls; the smell of their desperation is as pungent as it is intoxicating. It is a combination of exhaust fumes mixed with blood, sweat, and tears. The putrid stench of contaminated water and polluted air should be enough to make any sane living thing run away, but these new Lagosians are not normal beings. They arrive with wide-eyed wonder and optimism, lured by visions of a land that could be flowing with milk and honey.

But the only thing that flowed consistently on the streets of Lagos is the floodwater on the street when it rained or, sometimes, the petrol from fallen fuel tankers, spilling their contents over the roads and luring desperate men and women to risk their lives for a scoop or two of that liquid gold—fully aware that with the slightest trigger, the fuel could consume everything in its path like a swarm of locusts devouring a field. Or less physically destructive things, like insults spewing unhindered from the sialoquent lips of a danfo driver as his conductor bangs on the body of their already battered bus in a bid to intimidate and force the bus into spaces no vehicle should ever be able to move through.

There is an air of urgency that permeates every aspect of life in Lagos. A persistent need to get to destinations faster, for actions to take place quicker, and movement to be more hurried. The hustle spirit is the backbone of Lagos life and living; it is more than a buzzword describing the urban city life. It is a two-faced entity with evil on one side and good on the other: landlords with juxtaposing properties.

“Shine your eye,” every newbie Lagosian is warned, because this is no ordinary city. But if the eyes are truly the window to the soul, then “shining” them here is the last thing you want to do. For if you keep them open wide enough for long enough, you’ll find your sockets become sunken from not getting enough hours of sleep, rushing out too early in the day to get to work and rushing back home too late at night to rest your weary eyes for a few minutes before having to pry them back open again.

Your cheeks and hips may also sink, and your voice may become hoarse from raging at irate drivers and danfo conductors and people in the markets that line the very narrow streets and obnoxious government officials that attempt to keep order on the roads. And you wonder and cry and consider the possibility of putting an end to the never-ending cycle that has become your life in this city. It is in that moment that you realise that there are really only two choices to surviving—because let’s face it, are we really living?—in  Lagos: you either love it here or leave. There is no middle ground, no room for indecision; the city, quite literally, has no space left for that.

Featured Image: Opeyemi Adisa