Victoria Okoye, Lagos Community Manager
With its ever-growing urban economy, Lagos continues to be a space of immense economic growth, yet pervasive inequalities. Two disparate trends — domestic insecurity associated with Boko Haram, and increasing private sector developments like Eko Atlantic City — are topics to follow in the coming year.
Threats of insecurity, domestic terrorism
In just a few years, the establishment of the militant jihadist group Boko Haram in northeastern Nigeria and the expansion of its threats and physical violence have heightened insecurity from corner to corner of the country. While few confirmed acts of violence have yet taken place in Lagos, the perception of insecurity is growing: in March, security forces demolished a handful of mosques feared to be covers for local Boko Haram activities, and police patrols and checkpoints have become increasingly common in response to bomb scares around the city, including at a Methodist church in Ikorodu and Awolowo House in Ikeja this year.
Boko Haram (which translates to “Western education is sinful” from the local Hausa language) aims to overthrow the country’s secular governance structure and replace it with stringent Islamic law, through a modus operandi of threats and deadly violence. Undoubtedly, the movement has an extremist religious element. That said, the growth and spread of the Boko Haram movement also seems rooted in the development challenges that squarely face Nigeria generally and Lagos in particular: widespread poverty despite immense urban economic growth, combined with exploitation of the poor and unequal access to resources, education, and economic opportunity. Moreover Lagos, the region’s cosmopolitan financial capital and a megacity that beckons Western-oriented educational professionals, investors, and entertainers, stands in stark contrast to the aims that Boko Haram hopes to achieve.
The recently launched Nigeria Security Tracker by the Council on Foreign Relations surveys local and international media and then, using statistics and maps, tracks the incidence of violence motivated by political, economic, or social grievances. For those interested in following security trends in Nigeria and in Lagos, this resource will be a valuable tool.
Private sector developments
On the other end of the spectrum and seemingly a world away is the continued development of Eko Atlantic City, a nine-square-kilometer planned mixed development roughly the size of Manhattan. In Lagos, a densely populated megacity where space is a fiercely sought commodity, space for Eko City is being created — by dredging sand from the ocean floor and annexing it to Victoria Island’s Bar Beach. An estimated $6 billion private investment, Eko Atlantic City stands as the city’s most visible testament to a private sector-focused urban development strategy for Lagos. But this development, envisioned as a serene, safe space with tree-lined roadways, aiming to “enhance the status of Lagos and create a new and stronger financial hub for the whole of West Africa,” seems an ironic attempt to address urban development by opting out — creating new, segregated spaces as an alternative to addressing the inherent challenges and inequalities facing what already exists, and, as a result, reifying these inequalities.
The rise of Eko Atlantic and the rise in gated communities demonstrate a long-emerging trend of outsourcing traditional government responsibilities in infrastructure development, housing, and services to the private sector. In fact, many consider Lagos to be an environment ripe for private-sector investment.
In 2013 and beyond, Lagos’ government will have to find ways to address the flight from crime-ridden, traffic-locked inner-city spaces by the affluent, and the attendant gaps that flight creates — in terms of local economic development, in terms of safety, in terms of accessibility. These attempts in particular provide safe, accessible spaces, but only for those with the ability and willingness to pay — which, despite the expansion of Lagos’ economy, represents a small proportion of the local population.