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Lagos Mega City Project: The Way I See It

Patience Osakwe,
Mass Comm. Dept.,
Lagos State Polytechnic, Ikorodu
8th May '08

Lagos, currently the sixth largest city in the world, is growing faster than any of the world's other mega cities. Mega city is a term used by the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements for "urban agglomerations" with more than 10m people.

Without doubt, the level at which the Lagos Mega City Project, initiated by the immediate past governor of the state, Bola Tinubu, is being carried out, shows that before 2020, Lagos will be one of the best mega cities in the world. The incumbent, Governor Babatunde Fashola, has kept harping on this. On November 9, 2007, the state government awarded contracts worth N894.4m to indigenous contractors under the Lagos Metropolitan Development and Governance Project.

While emphasising the importance placed on the scheme by his administration, the governor told contractors that the project neither belonged to the World Bank nor the Lagos State Government. He said it belonged to the blighted communities in the state and their inhabitants. When the state government started the scheme in 2006, many Lagosians complained about the pain they were experiencing, especially on Lagos Island.

But today, it is another story, as most people who live or pass through Marina, Nnamdi Azikiwe Road, Balogun, Broad Street and Tinubu Square, among others, are now happy with the level of development that has come to the area. Though thousands of people have been displaced and some relocated, many others are yet to be relocated. The government needs to do something urgent to have them resettled in order to silence the critics who said that the projects are targeted at some tribes in the state.

The administration's Bus Rapid Transportation initiative is another way of ensuring good governance and assurance of the mega city. Another "pain-to-gainâ" decision taken by the state government is the closure of substandard private schools across the metropolis. However, the state government still has a lot to do on road construction, renovation of public schools, health centres in Ofin-Ile in Ikorodu, Bayeku, Odogunyan, Ijebu, Egbe-Idimu, and others. I suggest that the state government also focus its attention on rail and marine road system.With all these, I believe that by 2020, Lagos will have a new face as one of the best mega cities in the world.

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