THE spate of demolition, reconstruction and urban renewal currently taking place in Lagos shows that major structural changes would occur in the city in the next couple of years. This will positively affect the physical outlook of city.

The way things are going shows that the State Government has rolled its sleeves to clean up the dirty city characterized by unsightly, stinking and putrefying garbage. A city that hitherto thrives on filth better described as jungle city is geared towards wearing a new look under the Lagos Mega-City project.

The general infrastructural outlook would change to match the status of the most cosmopolitan city in Nigeria.
The tempo is noticeable all over the city. If this is sustained and not slacked or abandoned midway like many Nigerian projects, in the next five years or so, many residents who have been away for a while would not recognise the city or be able to locate their streets.

This is because the dilapidated, narrow, pothole filled streets with open gutters that form the landmarks of Lagos would have disappeared and replaced with decent subsurface concrete drains.

The shanty kiosks and decrepit market tables and chairs standing on drainage channels would have gone and replaced with clearly marked street signs. The street signs would be the only landmarks that would direct residents to their homes. Night returnees would have to make phone calls to their kit and kin in order to find their direction because the streets would have widened and resurfaced. That would be good in a way.

The massive urban renewal project of the state government has taken many residents by surprise. Few people would think that the ugly state of affairs in Lagos would ever change. Lagos is a city that has thrived on planlessness and filth for decades. The city has become synonymous with entropy - organised disorder. A mega-city without water supply, where every household owns a hand-dug well or borehole for water supply. A city, and certainly the only one in the world where traffic goes in all directions! Traffic signs are none existent or where they exist are not obeyed. A city where people transact business, eat and drink on top of garbage and stinking gutters.

This unpleasant state of affairs has become entrenched in the city. The landlords exploit the situation to extort money from hapless economic migrants. Unscrupulous local council officials feast on the disorder and collect illegal rents from residents.

Council officials, landlords and indeed any indigene (Omonile) that could exercise authority freely allocate space to anyone that cares to erect Illegal structures indiscriminately on the streets. The result is complete disorder on the cityscape.

The disorder, in a way, contributes in attracting large influx of people from across the country and beyond into Lagos. The belief is that in Lagos anything is possible. Even if one doesn't have accommodation, he could manage to live under the bridge.

Consequently, the flyovers that crisscross the city were converted into makeshift residential homes underneath for hundreds of people who could not afford decent accommodation. Not only that, in Lagos, everywhere is accommodation - the bus stops, the motor parks, markets, etc. The nasty culture breeds miscreants and explosion in the population of the urban poor.

Whereas, urban poverty is one of the characteristics of underdevelopment, authorities in well-managed functional cities elsewhere know how to handle the situation. But when a city is bedeviled with infrastructural decay and dysfunctional facilities, urban poverty would compound its problems and make it un-liveable, insecure and unmanageable. This is what is happening in Lagos. The situation has made the city largely stressful, unpleasant and unsafe.

There are millions of people made up of the urban poor who are trapped in Lagos. These are economic migrants who came to Lagos to seek for employment when the country was economically buoyant and industries were working. But with the demise of the industrial sector and the closure of the factories, these people were retrenched without any other means of livelihood. They can neither go back to where they came from nor make a decent living in the city. Many of these able-bodied young men and women have settled in Lagos with families that must be catered for.

In an attempt to make ends meet, these categories of people engage in petty trading all over the place. They live in squalor and own the shanty kiosks and hawking found all over the place. The large population in Lagos provides ready market for any type of consumables on sale. This explains why petty trading is a thriving business all over the city. But the city is not planned to accommodate this sort of business.

There are no large markets with modern shops to accommodate petty traders. Most of the markets in Lagos just sprang up indiscriminately without being in the city plan.
Besides, the teeming unemployed population is the ones that have taken to commercial motorcycle (Okada) riding all in an attempt to eke out a living in a city. Outside petty trading and Okada riding, millions of people would have nothing to do in Lagos. This raises fundamental questions about the urban renewal programme.

Whereas there is urgent need to change the face of Lagos by fixing the dilapidated infrastructure, the question is whether or not the economic needs of the larger population of the city is taken into account. What happens to the people whose means of livelihood have been dislocated? Are they accommodated in the plan or are we going to have a repeat of what happened in Abuja FCT an elitist city?

Incidentally, about 70 per cent of the population in Lagos is made up of low-income economic migrants whose means of livelihood would be affected severely under the urban renewal programme. Except there is a way of addressing the needs of this people, the urban renewable project would most likely depopulate Lagos.

This is because the demolition of markets, shanties and reconstruction of roads and streets would destroy the means of livelihood of many people as well as render many homeless. People who have no means of livelihood and no accommodation would most likely leave Lagos for their home states or elsewhere. With the collapse of the industries that originally attracted millions to Lagos, a reverse out migration would depopulate the city and could remove its mega-city status if the population falls below eight million people.

I have said in my previous comments in this column that what makes a mega-city is the population element. A mega-city is a metropolis with a population in excess of 10 million people. It is not the infrastructure that confers the status of a mega-city. While critical and functional infrastructure is required to cater for the teeming population, the infrastructure alone does not make a mega-city.

If infrastructure were the overriding factor, then Abuja FCT would have qualified to be called mega-city because it has somewhat functional infrastructure. But with a population of less than a million people, it doesn't qualify to be a mega-city.
This clarification is necessary to avoid confusing infrastructure need in Lagos with the population element in relation to a mega-city.

There are insinuations that the urban renewal project is meant to drive people out of Lagos. But that would be misplaced because if Lagos were depopulated by overt or covert plan by the State Government, then the city would lose its mega-city status if the critical population falls below the benchmark.

Viewed from this angle, the Lagos State Government should endeavour to implement an urban renewal programme that is people-oriented. While roads are being reconstructed, government should also build modern markets in different parts of the city for the economic needs of those displaced by demolition work. While constructing drainages, the state should also consider embarking on developing modern estates for low-income earners and the self-employed whose shanty residences have been demolished.

The human element to the re-development effort should not be ignored except the state government wants to make Lagos an elitist city.
The Fashola administration appears determined to change the face of Lagos as part of the mega-city project. It is important to point out that the project is not a Lagos State Government effort alone.

The Federal Government is also involved and that is why the past Obasanjo administration appointed renowned Professor Akin Mabogunje Chairman of the Mega-City Committee to produce a blueprint for the Lagos Mega-City project.
The Fashola administration has shown much interest in the project. The floating of a N275 billion bond on December 24 by the state government further demonstrates the commitment of the governor to the project.

Reports indicate that the state is raising the amount to finance the capital expenditure in respect of renewing the state's infrastructure, including roads, bridges, water transportation, healthcare and education, environment and waste management. This shows that there is no going back on this venture. We want the best and only the best in this project.

Could not resist this shot.
This is one day in the life of the average Lagos market woman, buying bulk produce for retailing. If you look carefully at the truck you can find baskets of tomatoes and tubers of yam ready for the local markets where they reside to sell. These women take care of at least 2 or more children and their households with the income they make from this petty trade.

The average woman in the Lagos metropolis works or does some sort of trade. The commercial viability of the city often helps. Any hardworking person in this city can afford not to go hungry if the person can put together small amounts of capital to start a petty trade either in roasted/boiled groundnuts, roasted plantain, roasted yam, pure water (satchet water on-the-go) and many other food items hawked along the streets of Lagos on daily basis to raise income to keep body and soul together.
In Ghana and certain parts of India, micro financing has helped petty traders to live a life of their dreams.

These people usually fall below the radar of lending from banks simply because they are regarded as un-bankable due to size. So discerning social entrepreneurs provide relief by offering at least $100 each to market women/men. Such lending is done on the back of the already existing local contributory credit system called Osusu common among the west African countries.

The women know each other, trust each other and act as surety for one another and repay the loans from their weekly profits. Most times a failed debt becomes the debt of the entire group and this keeps default rate low.

In African culture where the woman is often left in charge of the household, transforming a woman's fortune is akin to sustainable development as it means better education, health care and nutrition for their offsprings and indeed society!