#lekky for third star!!

[pucktyreshannism]

watching VAN vs SEA yesterday to see many baby canucks doing so well was such a parent moment

[thisdaynews]

(IT WILL SHOCK YOU)Lekki Shooting: Read Full Details of Lai Mohammed’s Petition To CNN

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/it-will-shock-youlekki-shooting-read-full-details-of-lai-mohammeds-petition-to-cnn/

(IT WILL SHOCK YOU)Lekki Shooting: Read Full Details of Lai Mohammed’s Petition To CNN

The Federal Government in an appeal on Monday charged United States-based Cable News Network (CNN) of 15 grave editorial offenses in its inclusion of the detailed taking shots at Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos.

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The request which was by and by endorsed by the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, was routed to Vice-President, Communications of CNN, Mr. Jonathan Hawkins.

Naija News reports that the request was named “How a Bloody Night of Bullets Quashed a Young Protest Movement.”

The request, dated November 23, 2020, peruses:

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… “Our consideration has been attracted to an ‘examination’ by CNN, named ‘How a Bloody Night of Bullets Quashed a Young Protest Movement’ and circulated on 18 November 2020, in which the worldwide news association said it had “revealed that Nigerian security powers started shooting at unarmed nonconformists” at the Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos, Nigeria, during the #EndSARS fight. ‘Report missed the mark concerning editorial principles’

… We put down to put on account that the report didn’t simply miss the mark concerning editorial norms, it fortifies the disinformation that is going around on the issue, it is glaringly untrustworthy and it is a helpless bit of editorial work by a trustworthy worldwide news association.

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… “In the primary occasion, the report didn’t satisfy the most fundamental of the center standards of news coverage — equilibrium and reasonableness. As per the site, www.ethics.journalists.org, “equilibrium and reasonableness are exemplary popular expressions of news coverage morals: “In target news-casting, stories must be adjusted in the feeling of endeavoring to introduce all sides of a story. Reasonableness implies that a columnist ought to take a stab at exactness and truth in announcing, and not inclination a story so a peruser reaches the journalist’s ideal determination.”

… “Racing to air quite a pivotal story without introducing the public authority’s side is reprehensible and shaky. CNN said it reached more than 100 dissidents and relatives, however didn’t address one authority of Nigeria’s Federal Government. “While CNN said there was no reaction from the military and that authorities of Lagos State would not talk considering the Judicial Panel that is examining the issue, it didn’t state what exertion it made to talk with any authority of the Federal Government. CNN connected with FG

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… “truly CNN didn’t endeavor to arrive at the Federal Government. Nima Elbagir, who introduced the report and most presumably drove the examination, is acquainted with the Minister of Information and Culture, who is additionally the Spokesman for the Federal Government of Nigeria, yet didn’t state that she even attempted to arrive at the Minister.

“It is, along these lines, peculiar, most definitely, that she would hurry to air quite a significant examination report without getting the public authority’s side. As such, Nima, and by expansion, CNN, penetrated the most essential of the center standards of news-casting — equilibrium and decency. CNN depended intensely on unconfirmed recordings gathered from online media

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… “Another genuine break by CNN, in its ‘examination’, is that the organization depended vigorously on unsubstantiated film it gathered from web-based media. CNN was absent at the Lekki Toll Gate the evening of the episode. “Neither its correspondent nor cameraman was there, however it depended on observers. All things considered, this is laden with peril. While specialists state onlooker declaration is a strong type of proof, it is likewise dependent upon oblivious memory twists and predispositions. BBC’s record negates CNN’s “Not normal for CNN, a correspondent from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Pidgin Service, Damilola Banjo, was at the Lekki Toll Gate on the night being referred to, and was cited as saying officers shot inconsistently into the air and not at the dissidents — an immediate logical inconsistency of the position taken by CNN who depended on second and third-hand data.

… “In circulating its ‘insightful’ report, CNN helpfully failed to remember that on Oct. 23rd 2020, it earnestly tweeted, from its confirmed Twitter handle, that the military killed 38 individuals when it started shooting at tranquil nonconformists on Tuesday, Oct. twentieth 2020.

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“Very nearly a month later, a similar CNN — after an as far as anyone knows comprehensive examination — is currently revealing just a single demise from what the world was made to accept was a slaughter. Is CNN not humiliated by this sharp move down? Has CNN taken ownership of this and apologized for its tactless act?

… “It is likewise fascinating that while CNN got film demonstrating when the vehicles conveying troopers left their dormitory and showed up at the Lekki Toll Gate, it couldn’t acquire any recording indicating the assortments of those evidently executed in the slaughter. All things considered, criminological ballistic specialists will in all likelihood affirm that shooting military-grade weapons into a group won’t leave anybody requiring a magnifying instrument to search for blood or bodies at the scene.

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… “CNN has said it remains by its story, and that ‘our revealing was cautiously and carefully investigated.” This is astounding, taking into account that the story needs reasonableness and equilibrium, as we have brought up, and that the association depended vigorously on controlled online media recordings. “This retreat to a dreamer antique appears to be more similar to a face-sparing measure by a generally good news network trapped in the blinding glare of ‘counterfeit news and disinformation headlamps. “Or then again by what other means does one clarify the pompous safeguard of a global news network that would not regard the most essential guideline of news-casting?

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… “One of CNN’s star observers in its ‘insightful announcing is DJ Switch. Obscure to CNN, DJ Switch’s story on the Lekki Toll Gate shooting has changed a few times. DJ Switch’s ever-evolving stories “From asserting she checked 78 groups of dissenters who were probably murdered by officers the evening of the Lekki Toll Gate occurrence, she has twice, at any rate, changed the setback figure from 78 to 15 and afterward to 7, without a smidgen of proof. “CNN can’t profess not to realize that for anybody to go about as an observer, their validity must be blameless. DJ Switch’s validity doesn’t meet that edge.

… “In one of online media recordings of DJ Switch that was utilized by CNN (see connected connection 1), the woman (DJ Switch) guaranteed she and some anonymous people conveyed dead bodies and dropped them at the feet of the fighters. No video or photographs of dead bodies “She additionally guaranteed she addressed their administrator before the officers tossed the bodies into the vans. Inquisitively, for somebody who was streaming live on Instagram during the Lekki Toll Gate occurrence, there was not a solitary video or image of the dead bodies. “Not even Godson (Uyi), another CNN star observer whose video was additionally utilized by the organization, or any of the several nonconformists, all furnished with advanced mobile phones, at the scene recorded a video or shot an image of dead bodies being diverted by troopers.

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… “Discussing Godson, regardless of professing to have broke down long stretches of film, it is interested that CNN helpfully left out key pieces of Godson’s 57-minutes, 5-second video (see appended connect 2). “For instance, 13 minutes, 40 seconds into the video, there were voices, in road dialect, in the foundation disclosing to Godson that the shots were not from the troopers (na young men dey fire, that na nearby firearm sound… .it’s young men, which means promotes and criminals, who are shooting. “That is nearby weapon).

Exactly 20 minutes, 14 seconds into the video, Godson affirmed that the young men had drawn out their weapons and were shooting (nearby okah, he called it). “Around 23 minutes, 14 seconds into the video, Godson said ‘stand by, every one of these young men dey fire’ (which means discharges rang out from the promotes/punks).

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CNN, in its hurry to nail troopers and tell a ‘profoundly unique story’, advantageously left out these pieces of the Godson video, which might have demonstrated that furnished hooligans attacked the Lekki Toll Gate that evening, and might have hit any of the nonconformists as they shot inconsistently.

“This is plainly a ploy by the CNN columnist/moderator to control watchers of its ‘analytical’ report and power them to reach the correspondent’s ideal determination! Another video demonstrating a furnished dissident at the Lekki Toll Gate (see connected connection 3) was clearly not among the recordings investigated by CNN! Controlling watchers

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… “It is stunning that all through its examination’, CNN didn’t for once notice the way that six officers and 37 cops were executed during the #End SARS emergency, which likewise left 196 cops harmed, not to discussion of the great decimation of government and private properties the nation over. “All things being equal, the organization is focused on the slaughter that never occurred. Are security specialists not individuals as well? Is it true that they are not qualified for the security of their basic liberties?

… “For the record, this isn’t the first occasion when that CNN has conveyed a wrong or scam anecdote about Nigeria. “In February 2007, Nigeria blamed CNN for arranging one of its reports from the nation’s Niger Delta area, indicating shooters holding 24 Filipinos prisoner. Obviously, CNN and its then Africa Correspondent Jeff Koinange straight denied the charge, saying the organization didn’t pay for any piece of the report. “Afterward, in an email apparently shipped off a companion, Mr. Koinange was cited as saying: “obviously we needed to pay certain individuals to get the story… You don’t get such a story without paying off.” So much for disavowals!

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… “As a type of remediation, Nigeria’s Federal Government requests a quick and thorough examination from CNN into its ‘insightful’ report on the Lekki Toll Gate episode to decide, among others, its validness, regardless of whether it fulfilled the fundamental guidelines of news coverage and furthermore the particular utilization of unsubstantiated online media recordings to control popular feeling.

“While it is dependent upon CNN to agree or not

[upshotre]

Davido’s Evergreen Swag by Tony Ademiluyi

David Adeleke a.k.a Davido took the Nigerian musical scene by storm in 2011 when he launched his first musical album at the age of nineteen. In attendance at the well publicized launch was Africa’s richest man, Alhaji Aliko Dangote who incidentally was present at his birth in 1992 in faraway United States of America. Seven years have quickly gone by and the ‘Omo Baba Olowo’ as he initially called himself has shown no signs of slowing down as he keeps releasing hit songs after hits gathering a large number of fans with each passing day.   His fan base has grown from just Nigeria to the global scene and he has carted away numerous awards and performed in top notch shows across the globe. His awards are a whopping twenty-six with fourty-eight nominations all within this relatively short space of time.   He has also made good use of the social media especially instagram where he has well over one million followers to better project his brand.   Like most artistes he is in love with three ‘vices’ – women, wine and wad. He has two girls from previous lovers popularly called baby mamas in Nigerian parlance and was embroiled in a huge row with his first one, Sophia Momodu some years ago when he wanted to take away the custody of his daughter, Imade from her.   Like most stars, he has his emotional and soft side which he has shown for some time in his love for Chioma his fiancée. So much in love was he with her that he bought her a Porsche worth about 45 million naira and sang a hit song ‘Assurance’ which has amassed over five million views on Youtube. At twenty in 2012, he acquired his first mansion in Lekki Phase one for the princely sum of 140 million naira.   His first hit was ‘Back When’ followed quickly by ‘Aye’, ‘Skelewu’, ‘Gobe’, ‘Overseas’.   He has also had his fair share of controversies typical with many artistes the world over. In 2012 a picture surfaced of him with a hooker which he denied but shortly afterwards another went viral. He has had brawls in clubs involving his body guards.   Despite his youthful exuberance brands in the country have found him useful as an ambassador. He has been brand ambassador for telecommunications giants, MTN where he signed a thirty million naira deal with them and also for drinks giants, Guinness.   He lives luxuriously as he frequently displays his wealth via instagram – houses both at home and abroad, fast and expensive automobiles and even posted one time that he was planning to purchase a private jet which never materialized though.   Despite being born with a silver spoon, he didn’t allow that deter him from charting his own independence course far away from the comforts of his father’s sprawling business empire spread across the African continent. He chose to break his eggs and make his omelet by looking inwards, discovering his talents and maximizing it to the apogee. He wasn’t content to live under his affluent father’s shadow in a similar way Charles Chukwuemeka Oputa fought his battles to be independent of his equally famous father. He didn’t indulge in destructive vices like drugs like many privileged kids and chose the rather difficult part of breaking his own bones in an atmosphere surrounded by utmost comfort that could have made him laidback and unmotivated. He created an artificial hunger to achieve his dreams and is even more popular than his wealth father who is only known by a miniscule section of the Nigerian elite. His family transcends three generations as his grandfather was a Senator in the defunct Second Republic while his late uncle, Senator Isiaka Adeleke was the first civilian Governor of his native Osun State and was later elected a Senator and another uncle, Ademola Adeleke popularly called the dancing senator because of his great dancing skills despite his paunch succeeded his elder brother in the Senate after his demise under suspicious circumstances of food poisoning in 2016. He also nearly became the Governor of his home state, Osun losing to the current incumbent under controversial circumstances. Davido famously campaigned for him both on the field and on social media.   We congratulate him for the recent birth of his third child and first son, David Ifeanyi Adedeji Jnr and wish him a Happy 27th birthday in advance – November 21st.   Keep making Nigeria and Africa proud!   Tony Ademiluyi writes from Lagos and edits www.africanbard.com Read the full article

[newssplashy]

Album Review: AKA's ''Touch My Blood'' ticks all the boxes of a stellar body of work

If ''Touch My Blood'' is indeed South African Rapper, AKA's last album as he claims, then he is signing out with the biggest bang in his discography.

South African rap wears many faces, and one of its most prominent is AKA, the emcee who leads a new generation of purely English rappers that have surfaced on the SA scene in recent times.

Kiernan Jarryd Forbes, better known as AKA, released his highly anticipated third studio album on June 15, 2018, an album he claims may just be his last body of work.

'Touch My Blood', is AKA's first independent release and has already been certified Gold by the Recording Industry of South Africa (RiSA) barely a week after its release, even though the rapper is demanding for more from his fans.

But in this album, the talented artist who insists that he should not be restricted to the box of being just a rapper, finally weaves all the side to his music in one piece.

From the political, to the lover boy, his cocky side and pop flair, all the elements are well embedded to give us a taste of all he offers across the 16 tracks project.

'Touch My Blood' starts with the album titled track, where he comes off guns blazing, with his rap coming off as hungry as ever as he paints a picture of his progress in the game.

He is most expressive on the intro touching a variety of topics and he even affords to go political as he calls out the leader of South Africa's official opposition party, Democratic Alliance.

''Pre '94 I was laanie, Post '94, kwensakalani?, grand folks voted for the party, even threw us in the garbage, Mmusi Maimane, say that we are the next Zimbabwe.'', he raps.

The album also sees AKA go soulful on a number of tracks like 'Beyonce', 'Sweet Fire' and 'Daddy Issues'.

 On 'Beyonce', he is all emotional as he vulnerably opens up on his relationship with his ex-girlfriend, Bonang Matheba; which was a major news item in 2017 when the couple broke up.

''Wherever you are, I wonder if you doing well, remember in London when I took you to see Miguel?, remember when I kicked you out the hotel?, 50 minutes later I was blowing up on your cell?, we was crazy since the pool on some TMZ shit, even made the fucking news on the Mozambique trip.''

He addresses his break-ups on 'Sweet Fire', while he continues the conversation he started on his previous album with the song, 'Daddy Issues' by offering parental advice on 'Daddy Issues' II .

 'Reset' sees the album first features in fellow South African rapper, JR and Okmalumkoolkat, where he asks his girl if she would still be there without all the money.

'Magriza' is one of the standout cuts on the project, the beat kicks in slowly and then his voice beautifully layers over it, as he raps smoothly with some Kanye West impressions in his flow.

''I done suffered for the cause, summer after summer I put numbers on the board, damn, am I the only rapper with the balls, to say I don’t really give a fuck about awards?'', he rhymes.

And just when you thought it could not get any doper, Kwesta's delivery makes this a really solid effort.

On 'Fela In Versace', which is produced by Nigerian beat-maker, Kiddominant, who also features on the joint, he attempts to tap into the Afrobeats vibe, while Kiddominant sings about driving through Lekki Epe Expressway.

The album changes mood on 'Star Signs' as AKA goes bar for bar with Stogie T, while JR makes a return on 'Mame' with their verses matching each other perfectly.

Sonically, this is AKA's most wholesome project yet; diverse in sound, wider in appeal, but well conceived in theme and execution, it feels like this time, he has nothing to hide and seeks to make his voice the loudest.

'Touch My Blood' is a heavy dose of rap, sprinkled with a fair amount of pop to fit into modern trends. There is music to make you dance and also enough to fill your book of quotables.

AKA stands in between both worlds of pop and hip-hop and in this body of work, he has found a way to create a right blend, the album which he says may be his last may well be the best that he ever recorded, and help him exit the scene at its highest level.

Rating: 4/5

Ratings

1-Dull 2-Boring 2.5-Average 3-Worth Checking Out 3.5-Hot 4-Smoking Hot 4.5-Amazing 5-Perfection

source http://www.newssplashy.com/2018/08/album-review-akas-touch-my-blood-ticks.html

[kim26chiu]

The Once and Future Lagos

Lagos, Nigeria. Image via City Journal

City Journal just ran a very interesting piece on Lagos by Armin Rosen. Lagos is by some estimates Africa’s largest city and is well known as a creative capital. I don’t know anything personally about the city, but found Rosen’s description balanced and fascinating. Here are some excerpts:

Poverty, confusion, and moral fluidity haven’t stopped Lagos from achieving global prominence. Maybe an all-pervading looseness has even been a source of the city’s growth, since it has expanded with a velocity that prudent planning would avoid. Lagos is now West Africa’s economic and cultural hub, as well as perhaps the continent’s largest city, depending on which population figures one accepts. By most accounts, Lagos has twice as many people as London, along with a GDP greater than all but six African states. In its successes and failures, the city offers a cautionary preview of where an urbanizing developing world is hurtling. … The project seeks to expand the congested Victoria Island area, while creating a glittering showcase of world-class high-end real estate, thus helping to reverse Lagos’s reputation for disorder. But the initiative reflects a certain myopia: the landfill destroyed Bar Beach, once a popular public space in a city with no large parks and few major squares or monumental avenues. It’s not obvious whether the existing infrastructure can support such a large development so far off the mainland; as it is, Victoria and Lagos Islands are accessible only through a gauntlet of traffic choke points. The development is also aimed at a tiny upper sliver of an overwhelmingly poor city. “The plan is to create a Dubai and just ignore people who can’t afford to live in the proverbial Dubai, which describes most of the population,” says Olaolu Ogunmodede, a researcher at the Lagos-based Center for Public Policy Alternatives and an editor at The Republic, of the Lagos state government’s approach. (The city is organized as a state within the Nigerian federal system.) … In nearby Ikoyi and Victoria Island, affluent Lagosians have little reason to venture too far, either—they live in gated estates, with their own security, garbage collection, electricity, and private bus services. One gets frequent reminders of how segmented Lagos is, how cordoned off its parts are from one another. Cut down a side street in Ikeja, and you’re suddenly in a squalid parallel world, where generators scream beside narrow mud streets, lined with freelancing numbers-runners and peddlers hawking broken clocks. The alley ends, and the modern downtown resumes again. From the Third Mainland Bridge, travelers can see the plush villas of Banana Island and Lekki glimmer in the distance at night, while the vast lagoon-side Makoko slum, less than 500 yards west of the six-mile-long causeway and home to an estimated 250,000 people, is invisible in the darkness. Makoko has become a transit point for timber from farther down the coast, creating yet another vibrant hyper-local poverty economy. You can smell the tang of burning garbage and wood from the bridge whenever traffic slows.

Cheta Nwaze, a researcher at SBM intelligence, offers more insight into the city’s divisions. Nwaze and another SBM analyst, Ikemesit Effiong, meet me at Seven Eagles Spur, a diner-style restaurant inside Ikeja’s City Mall, decorated in images of southwestern American desert highways and chiefs in feather headdresses. Nwaze informs me that, a decade ago, the land that the mall now occupies was a slum. Residents were removed with a minimum of due process or public deliberation—still the standard procedure for any big-ticket Lagos development project. The mall has a KFC and a Nike store, and our lunch bill comes out to 9,100 naira, or $25. The people who had lived on the site of the future mall probably never imagined such a thing. “You give someone 9,100 naira and tell them to kill someone, and they will do it,” Nwaze says, only half-joking. … Lagos is booming. Credible estimates put the population at 17 million or 18 million, but the city defies understanding of its true scope. “Most Nigerians can’t be accessed even by the government,” Effiong notes. This relative lack of data could turn out to have broader significance, since the world is sure to look more like Lagos in the coming decades. An estimated 54.5 percent of the global population now lives in cities, but urbanization is less complete in the developing world. Slightly more than half of Asia’s population, and nearly 60 percent of Africa’s, still lives in rural areas. The number of cities with 500,000 inhabitants or more is expected to grow by 80 percent in Africa alone between now and 2030, and the ten cities that the UN projects to cross the 10 million–inhabitant “megacity” threshold by 2030 are all in developing countries. By 2030, some 730 million people, or 8.9 percent of the people on earth, will live in these megacities, up from the current total of 500 million, or 6.8 percent. Success has made Lagos an unnerving glimpse into the near future. … This constant flux can make for a verdant creative environment. Jumia and iRoko, West Africa’s leading e-commerce and entertainment streaming services, respectively, are regionally important companies founded in Lagos during the past decade. Music and movies produced in the city dominate West Africa and beyond—it was a Lagosian, Wizkid, who appeared alongside the Canadian pop star Drake in his 2016 megahit “One Dance.” As Edet Okun, an assistant curator at Lagos’s Nimbus gallery explains, the city has also fueled a burgeoning art market. “The money is here, and you have a high concentration of people,” Okun says, guiding me through a collection that includes traditional Ife bronzes, as well as striking monochromatic abstract works from Nigerian artist Olu Okekeanye.

Attracting Nigerians of every description, Lagos offers hope for a country often defined by its religious, regional, and ethnic cleavages. It is the exception to Nigeria’s fault lines, “probably the one place in the country where, regardless of where you came from, you can feel like you belong,” one Nigerian told me. For some Lagosians, the rationalized marketplace of the city is also the only way of escaping a dead-end village economy, in which labor is a social or familial obligation, rather than a source of money and freedom. “A lot of these many odd jobs that people do for free in rural areas, people pay for in Lagos,” says Ray Ekpu, cofounder of the magazine Newswatch. Ekpu moved to Lagos from Nigeria’s southeast in 1980 and has seen the worst of the city: he was imprisoned six times during military rule, and a close colleague at Newswatch died in a mail-bomb attack in 1986 that many suspected was linked with the magazine’s work. “People come searching for the bright lights,” Ekpu observes. “They think they can find a good life here. Some of it is true. Some of it is a myth. They think if they can get here, they can find something to do.” That Lagosian myth—of opportunity and an escape from Nigeria’s various social and political ills—has an intense hold over the country. …

Infrastructural lapses aside, Lagos uneasily embodies one of civilization’s fundamental divides: the split between the city and the provinces, between a flagging periphery and the center toward which that periphery gravitates. The numbers reflect an astounding imbalance. Lagos contributes more to Nigeria’s GDP than any other state, and twice as much as the second highest-ranked state. Only 214 Nigerians pay 20 million naira ($56,000) or more in taxes each year; all live in Lagos, which collects some 39 percent of Nigeria’s internally generated revenue. Lagos state governor Akinwunmi Ambode has claimed that 60 percent of the country’s industrial and commercial business takes place in his city.

Click through to read the whole thing.

from Aaron M. Renn http://www.urbanophile.com/2018/07/12/the-once-and-future-lagos/

[barb31clem]

The Once and Future Lagos

Lagos, Nigeria. Image via City Journal

City Journal just ran a very interesting piece on Lagos by Armin Rosen. Lagos is by some estimates Africa’s largest city and is well known as a creative capital. I don’t know anything personally about the city, but found Rosen’s description balanced and fascinating. Here are some excerpts:

Poverty, confusion, and moral fluidity haven’t stopped Lagos from achieving global prominence. Maybe an all-pervading looseness has even been a source of the city’s growth, since it has expanded with a velocity that prudent planning would avoid. Lagos is now West Africa’s economic and cultural hub, as well as perhaps the continent’s largest city, depending on which population figures one accepts. By most accounts, Lagos has twice as many people as London, along with a GDP greater than all but six African states. In its successes and failures, the city offers a cautionary preview of where an urbanizing developing world is hurtling. … The project seeks to expand the congested Victoria Island area, while creating a glittering showcase of world-class high-end real estate, thus helping to reverse Lagos’s reputation for disorder. But the initiative reflects a certain myopia: the landfill destroyed Bar Beach, once a popular public space in a city with no large parks and few major squares or monumental avenues. It’s not obvious whether the existing infrastructure can support such a large development so far off the mainland; as it is, Victoria and Lagos Islands are accessible only through a gauntlet of traffic choke points. The development is also aimed at a tiny upper sliver of an overwhelmingly poor city. “The plan is to create a Dubai and just ignore people who can’t afford to live in the proverbial Dubai, which describes most of the population,” says Olaolu Ogunmodede, a researcher at the Lagos-based Center for Public Policy Alternatives and an editor at The Republic, of the Lagos state government’s approach. (The city is organized as a state within the Nigerian federal system.) … In nearby Ikoyi and Victoria Island, affluent Lagosians have little reason to venture too far, either—they live in gated estates, with their own security, garbage collection, electricity, and private bus services. One gets frequent reminders of how segmented Lagos is, how cordoned off its parts are from one another. Cut down a side street in Ikeja, and you’re suddenly in a squalid parallel world, where generators scream beside narrow mud streets, lined with freelancing numbers-runners and peddlers hawking broken clocks. The alley ends, and the modern downtown resumes again. From the Third Mainland Bridge, travelers can see the plush villas of Banana Island and Lekki glimmer in the distance at night, while the vast lagoon-side Makoko slum, less than 500 yards west of the six-mile-long causeway and home to an estimated 250,000 people, is invisible in the darkness. Makoko has become a transit point for timber from farther down the coast, creating yet another vibrant hyper-local poverty economy. You can smell the tang of burning garbage and wood from the bridge whenever traffic slows.

Cheta Nwaze, a researcher at SBM intelligence, offers more insight into the city’s divisions. Nwaze and another SBM analyst, Ikemesit Effiong, meet me at Seven Eagles Spur, a diner-style restaurant inside Ikeja’s City Mall, decorated in images of southwestern American desert highways and chiefs in feather headdresses. Nwaze informs me that, a decade ago, the land that the mall now occupies was a slum. Residents were removed with a minimum of due process or public deliberation—still the standard procedure for any big-ticket Lagos development project. The mall has a KFC and a Nike store, and our lunch bill comes out to 9,100 naira, or $25. The people who had lived on the site of the future mall probably never imagined such a thing. “You give someone 9,100 naira and tell them to kill someone, and they will do it,” Nwaze says, only half-joking. … Lagos is booming. Credible estimates put the population at 17 million or 18 million, but the city defies understanding of its true scope. “Most Nigerians can’t be accessed even by the government,” Effiong notes. This relative lack of data could turn out to have broader significance, since the world is sure to look more like Lagos in the coming decades. An estimated 54.5 percent of the global population now lives in cities, but urbanization is less complete in the developing world. Slightly more than half of Asia’s population, and nearly 60 percent of Africa’s, still lives in rural areas. The number of cities with 500,000 inhabitants or more is expected to grow by 80 percent in Africa alone between now and 2030, and the ten cities that the UN projects to cross the 10 million–inhabitant “megacity” threshold by 2030 are all in developing countries. By 2030, some 730 million people, or 8.9 percent of the people on earth, will live in these megacities, up from the current total of 500 million, or 6.8 percent. Success has made Lagos an unnerving glimpse into the near future. … This constant flux can make for a verdant creative environment. Jumia and iRoko, West Africa’s leading e-commerce and entertainment streaming services, respectively, are regionally important companies founded in Lagos during the past decade. Music and movies produced in the city dominate West Africa and beyond—it was a Lagosian, Wizkid, who appeared alongside the Canadian pop star Drake in his 2016 megahit “One Dance.” As Edet Okun, an assistant curator at Lagos’s Nimbus gallery explains, the city has also fueled a burgeoning art market. “The money is here, and you have a high concentration of people,” Okun says, guiding me through a collection that includes traditional Ife bronzes, as well as striking monochromatic abstract works from Nigerian artist Olu Okekeanye.

Attracting Nigerians of every description, Lagos offers hope for a country often defined by its religious, regional, and ethnic cleavages. It is the exception to Nigeria’s fault lines, “probably the one place in the country where, regardless of where you came from, you can feel like you belong,” one Nigerian told me. For some Lagosians, the rationalized marketplace of the city is also the only way of escaping a dead-end village economy, in which labor is a social or familial obligation, rather than a source of money and freedom. “A lot of these many odd jobs that people do for free in rural areas, people pay for in Lagos,” says Ray Ekpu, cofounder of the magazine Newswatch. Ekpu moved to Lagos from Nigeria’s southeast in 1980 and has seen the worst of the city: he was imprisoned six times during military rule, and a close colleague at Newswatch died in a mail-bomb attack in 1986 that many suspected was linked with the magazine’s work. “People come searching for the bright lights,” Ekpu observes. “They think they can find a good life here. Some of it is true. Some of it is a myth. They think if they can get here, they can find something to do.” That Lagosian myth—of opportunity and an escape from Nigeria’s various social and political ills—has an intense hold over the country. …

Infrastructural lapses aside, Lagos uneasily embodies one of civilization’s fundamental divides: the split between the city and the provinces, between a flagging periphery and the center toward which that periphery gravitates. The numbers reflect an astounding imbalance. Lagos contributes more to Nigeria’s GDP than any other state, and twice as much as the second highest-ranked state. Only 214 Nigerians pay 20 million naira ($56,000) or more in taxes each year; all live in Lagos, which collects some 39 percent of Nigeria’s internally generated revenue. Lagos state governor Akinwunmi Ambode has claimed that 60 percent of the country’s industrial and commercial business takes place in his city.

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from Aaron M. Renn http://www.urbanophile.com/2018/07/12/the-once-and-future-lagos/