Welcome to the smallest of the big cities, ideally located at the most
attractive sea shore in the Western African region… Lagos, one of the most biggest cities in the world, has retained her charm as a lively town and
the most populous.
The
second fastest-growing city in Africa and the seventh in the world. The city that has attracted
everyone (no matter their ethnic background) with promising possibilities. To some indigens of neighboring cities, Lagos is a place to make it big, their hopes are hopes for the wrong reasons and as they struggle for bus ticket to their dreamland their hopes quickly comes to nothing at the end
of the day. To some, it's a new paradigm, "an announcement of the
future" which is popularly translated in local parlance as "E go better"
The
rich occupy the most classic territories in this city, with their roads paved
with tiles, and homes well constructed to suite modernization, they live and work in skyscrapers.
Conversely,
the poor and their relative concubines wallow in undeveloped territories, living
their lives in fear of insecurity, with their faces decorated in despair. These
are the parameters of through life (true life) in Eko, a life doled out in quarters of
hardship.
In
the new, postmodern state of nature: garbage, muddy, ground plastics, and floods
have left inhabitants no place to shit or sleep, The “Face me I face you” cliché
has left no trace of privacy, citizens subsisting on contaminated water,
palm-wine gin, and lucks, with their lungs scarred from the burning industrial
air-waste. When seen from ground zero, they exhibit an abstract beauty of Lagos; but when
seen from the air - Lagos is garbage in disguise. Meanwhile life regresses towards
the future, death by death, and as newcomers troop into Lagos, existing inhabitant still hope for a good live after now.
These
are the urban destitute, the victims of a gospel of ‘prosperity’. Untouched
by irony or nostalgia— they picture a better Lagos but how can you discover what you haven't felt, or feel
the loss of things you've never known?
To
all Listeners, I wish that I could talk long after my own death, when it's too
late to talk to you about the city you live in, This is the world you live in:
This is Lagos.
…..
Written by Kels Manuel (Ifeanyichukwu)
