Homeless in Lagos: The politics of place

Lagos is a city whose jagged edge is its charm. Stretches of open space cannot simply be left alone.

Mallams arrange plates of slender tomatoes and baskets of red onions along freshly tarred roads. In the morning, small crowds surround newspaper vendors to debate the significance of import tariffs and compare European football league scores. Kiosks selling tinned milk, insecticide, and roasted groundnuts appear on street corners and call centres erect giant, colourful umbrellas and charge their customers per minute of a call.

This is nothing like Charlottetown, a city devoid of commotion and spectacle where simple obedience to the law guides the conduct of strangers. This is where I now live.

Traffic jams were part of growing up in Lagos. Vehicles stretched for hours and miles but miraculously vanished when the president visited. Traders sold peeled oranges, cold soft drinks, and sausage rolls to fatigued drivers and passengers. On these same roads sat those who begged for alms. They were sometimes wheeled by their young children or carrying babies on their backs. 

They slept under bridges at night; separated from the public gaze by tarpaulins discoloured by rain or stretched sacks of rice fastened with pegs. Sitting in my father's car on the way to school, it did not occur to me that those my age who ran on main roads unfazed by death slept in the open. 

Home was a quiet housing estate on the Lagos mainland where I rode my sister's bicycle and played in the rain with my siblings when our mother was out. Our neighbour, Johnny, sometimes came to play tennis with my brother and watermelons grew where we threw seed and forgot. Home was where my parents hosted umunna meetings and community mass.

I did not realize that there was a world in which girls came into womanhood at the mercy of strangers and the elements. That having found a place to lay one's head, by evening, one could return to carting earthly possessions in polyethylene bags because of an edict signed by the governor that afternoon. 

Lagos absorbs tragedy and marches forward with no recollection of its people's pain.

I discovered this on January 27, 2002, when fire began in a street market in Ikeja and spread to an armoury where munitions were stored. Soldiers and their families lived in the barracks here. By six o'clock that Sunday evening, an explosion levelled several blocks and killed about 300 people. The earth trembling under their feet, residents ran for safety and as many as 700 died in the stampede. 

I was with my parents that evening in Ikeja and on the way to hospital. I was asleep in the backseat with a bitter tongue and awoke to an orange sky. Fire from the munitions fell like hail all over Lagos. Military rule ended in 1999 so the governor's special broadcast that evening was to explain and assure that the blast was not evidence of a coup in progress. We arrived at home to relatives who had run from Ikeja. It was in this same house that our lesson teacher, Mr. Cyprian, a man whose temper was as short as his stature, gave us lessons after school. 

Lagos is a megacity startled by its own growth. For decades, people have come from across Nigeria and neighbouring countries like Togo to forge new paths. Because Boko Haram has killed and maimed thousands in the North, people come here to start afresh, and more are added to the count daily. 

Living in Lagos involves accepting that one is a misfortune away from penury.

Like the rest of Nigeria, Lagos practices a system of social governance called BYOI — Bring Your Own Infrastructure — turning households into little pockets of self-governing entities. Boreholes for water, generators for electricity, prayers for safety, hope for good health. At night, instead of the sound of crickets chirping or trees swaying in the gentle breeze, we endure a cacophony furnished by an orchestra of generators.

Lagos is powered by the fevered striving of a people who know that no one will catch them if they fall. For many, basic amenities like decent housing are out of reach.