In Nigeria today as it has been for
a long time now, living with waste as part of the natural environment has
become a way of life. Though vastly improved from the situation of the late
eighties/early nineties, it nevertheless remains true and was most recently
brought to the fore by the documentary by BBC in which they depicted Lagos our
“Centre of Excellence” as a vast slum.
Immediately of course, patriotic
Nigerians of all shades and colorations, including career civil servants such
as Nigerian ambassador to the United Kingdom, Dr. Tafida up in arms against the
lopsidedness of a report that failed to just as equally recognize the massive
improvement made by Nigerian governments in general environmental sanitation.
Describing Lagos as a slum is not only controversial but slippery.
In the United States, slum is often
used to refer to marginalized neighborhoods, but in developing countries, it
usually means a settlement built in or near a city by residents themselves,
without official authorization or regulation. Such housing are typically
substandard, and the infrastructure and services range from non-existent to
improvised. This later definition is more in keeping with the Oxford dictionary
definition. This defines a slum to be a section of a city that is very poor and
where the houses are dirty and in bad condition. From the standpoint of BBC as
an outsider from a country in which things not only work but one can
proverbially eat from the sidewalk, whatever the agenda, their position becomes
perhaps understandable.
But is the whole of Lagos like this?
Can the whole of Lagos fit into that definition? Hell no (A drive to Adeola
Odeku, Victoria Island or select parts of mainland will put paid to that).
However, their error is not total. The problem with Lagos as with many other
great cities of the developing world - I can name a few Mumbai(India),
Nairobi(Kenya), Cape Town(South Africa), Bangkok(Thailand), Rio de
Janeiro(Brazil), Medelin (Colombia), etc is that development is not general.
For instance within the same axis that you find the high brow Lekki and Ikoyi
estates of this world would you also find drab looking living habitations as
the run down Jakande Estates and satellites of the same. (How often it is that
I have passed through Bourdillion Avenue in Ikoyi or the “law school” area of
the Island and thought to myself –if only all of Nigeria or at least all of its
major cities was like this).
Not to mention the more obvious
places like Ajegunle, Amukoko, Badia, Bariga, Ijeshatedo/Itire, Iwaya, and
Makoko . And in Nigeria this situation is replicated all over the country in
places like the FCT, Ibadan and Port Harcourt. Accordingly the verdict passed
by BBC albeit erroneously on Lagos could just as well go for many other cities
or areas in Nigeria. It could perhaps also go for half of the other cities of
the developing world. Thus consider these statistics.
According to the United Nations Human Settlements Programme
(UN-HABITAT) report of 2003:-
• Some 923,986,000 people, or 31.6
per cent of the world’s total urban population, live in slums; some 43 per cent
of the urban population of all developing regions combined live in slums; some
78.2 per cent of the urban population in the least developed countries live in
slums; some six per cent of the urban population in developed regions live in
slum-like conditions.
• The total number of slum-dwellers
in the world increased by about 36 per cent during the 1990s and in the next 30
years, the global number of slum-dwellers will increase to about two billion if
no concerted action to address the challenge of slums is taken. Although (my
word) sub-Saharan Africa had the highest rate of slum-dwellers with 72 per cent
of the urban population living in slums, followed by South Central Asia with 59
per cent, east Asia with 36 per cent, western Asia with 33 per cent, and Latin
America and the Caribbean with 32 per cent. In numbers alone, Asia accounts for
some 60 per cent of the world’s urban slum residents. Asia has about 550 million
people living in slums, followed by Africa with 187 million, and Latin America
and the Caribbean with 128 million. While slums have largely disappeared in
developed countries approximately 54 million urban dwellers in high-income
countries live in slum-like conditions.
• Slums are also places in which the
vibrant mixing of different cultures has frequently resulted in new forms of
artistic expression, including some of the major musical and dance movements of
the 20th Century, such as jazz, blues, rock and roll, reggae, funk, hip-hop,
soukuss, break-dance, fado, flamenco and (Afro-beat-my words) .
Having said that though let it be
noted that my aim for writing this article/paper is not as a defense piecefor
Lagos or even Nigeria for that matter. Though an incorrigible patriot, the sole
purpose of my writing here is to offer a solution. The first step towards a
solution is to admit that there is a problem. Irrespective of the congestion
problems that our cities face, Nigeria and the vast majority of Nigerians are
dirty. Please note that I say this with respect to our people’s attitude
towards the environment and not necessarily their personal hygiene. In that
sense, I want to look at the solution from three angles. One-Law,
two-entrepreneurial participation as a panacea to unemployment and
environmental sustainability, and three- environmental reorientation.