They Call This Place Lagos -By Ariwoola Akinwale

In his classic album Fantasia Fuji, the late scion of Fuji music, Dr. Sikiru Ayinde Barrister, recounts the colonial land-grabbing timeline in Lagos. Drawing from folk songs, he recalls how spatial expansion, which began with the conquest of Oluwole and Bariga, was followed by an attempt to take Isale Eko. He described this attempt, masterminded by the resident colonial lords who took the people for kurumo (dunces), as self-deceit. Today, in that complex and limited geography, spatial contestation, domination, and conquest persist, intersecting with social identities among Lagos residents.

In the hands of an artist, the portrayal of Lagos on canvas is a spectacle of a multicoloured layer—community, chaos, and confusion in a spiral of haste. An aerial view from GIS or a drone camera reveals smeared colours and shades of contraptions and souls in a state of flux. What escapes both the camera and canvas is a social dynamic of negotiation for order and space by the residents—a yearning to make sense of the environment and carve a space for existence in literal and metaphorical terms.

Negotiation of Space

In this reflection, I explore how space is contested, negotiated, dominated, claimed, and reclaimed in the daily lived experience on the streets and in the communities of Lagos. I speak of spatial contestation in the restricted sense of competition for shared public space among Lagosians. This is different from the land grabbing and gentrification that may sometimes ensue between omo-onile, state actors, and private individuals.

In Lagos, the spectacles that make negotiation for space inevitable are everywhere. Consider a man, seemingly under the influence of kolos (a local term for intoxication), contesting with invisible forces on a Lagos street while circumspect pedestrians pay little attention. Or the street evangelist on a duty call, nestled among vendors who have permanently taken over public space for private use. See the keke marwa (tricycles) lining up on pedestrian walkways as if they were parks. Or the man who has commandeered a corner of the street, a self-contained asylum for himself—surrounded by dirt and relics. All this occurs amidst chaotic traffic that besmears the languid road.

A look at Ikeja

Ikeja serves as an interesting specimen of today’s Lagos spatial negotiation. The capital of Lagos—a heartland of commerce, arts, and services—is the city’s miniature of complexity and chaos.

Somewhere in that community lies the GRA (Government Residential Area), an ultramodern development hosting the elite class. It is a sparsely populated neighbourhood where popular governmental parastatals are headquartered: the Police College, the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, the Ikeja High Court, and many more are located here. The streets are named after prominent Nigerians and families—Ayo Rosiji, Fani-Kayode, Adeniji Adele, Obasa, and many more. It stretches expansively with a reserved mien throughout the day. Traffic can be occasionally busy during rush hour through the major outlets intersecting Ikeja. It shares its modernity with Ikoyi, Lekki, Omole, Chevron, Dolphin Estate, Banana Island, and a paltry number of other first-class estates in Lagos.

This is in sharp contrast with the surrounding neighbourhoods. Take its closest neighbours like Dopemu, Allen, and Awolowo Way, for instance; the convolution, influx, spatial arrangement, and competition are quite telling. Ikeja Under-bridge is the most chaotic of these. When two drivers are vying for a traffic lane, the most ruthless one—mindless of the possible damage to his vehicle—is the likely winner. Alternatively, the winner might be the one with an obviously intimidating presence (e.g., an embossed sticker on his vehicle identifying him as a military man) or the one with impeccable “big grammar” and a borrowed Queen’s English accent. That lyric by Tony Tetuila, “You don hit my car, oyinbo repete,” takes its life from such spectacles.

Ikeja Under-bridge, popularly known as Computer Village, is a tech hub within the city. Its complexity lies in delicately entertaining both vices and virtues. It is the Lagos “Silicon Valley,” where the Nigerian dream comes alive and where attention is paid to what young people are doing. In spite of its spatial convolution, a brimming community of phone and computer technicians, hackers, couplers, and IT engineers abounds here. But fraudsters, pickpockets, and late-hour robbers hang around here too. It is an overly populated urban space, mostly busy throughout the day. The connection between hustle and living, chaos and creativity, the faithful and the mundane, time and space, history and the present—all merge in its story of complex urbanity.

In contrast with the Ibara tech hub in Abeokuta and the Dugbe tech hub in Ibadan (two cities connected to Lagos), it is home to big fintech companies such as KoloPay, Credit Wallet, Zabita Technologies, Investa Nigeria, Flippay, and many more—attesting to its irrepressible creativity and dynamism in this tech era.

In this space, drivers negotiate for the right-of-way in traffic, road vendors compete for and conquer spaces along major roads, and pedestrians negotiate where to ease themselves when compelled by nature. Parking for cars is not free—sometimes mugu (a slang term for naive people) pay for such services to the Eko boys (street toughs) on the ground. In the GRA, the layout allows room for car parks at the owners’ risk; outside the GRA, the main roads serve that purpose at the risk of all: commuters, drivers, and pedestrians.

The major highways in Lagos house street urchins or miscreants—the ones who beg for a living during the day and turn into robbers at night. Under the bridge, some urchins approached a mugu. One of them, feigning a drunken state, mesmerized this unsuspecting client with an embarrassing display. He swaggered towards his potential client, and in a jiffy, with a jerk-like reflex, his phone was gone. The theatrics worked; the phone had been spotted hanging loosely from his side pocket. The mugu goes on, without realizing what just befell him. In another incident, the mugu is a driver in a traffic hold-up. An obvious street tough approaches him from the driver’s side window, distracting him with a meaningless request. From the other window, another street boy picks up everything on the passenger seat or dashboard. The driver zooms off, none the wiser.

In Lagos, when you recount any of these experiences to your friends, they remind you of that slogan-turned-mantra: “They call this place Lagos.”

Meanwhile, somewhere on that street, a food vendor suddenly takes over a space. Migrant workers, artisans, and factory workers rally here, and an association of this class evolves. Not far away, a similar circle grows around the sepe joint, where sachet gin and spirits unify the group. Politics and music are common subjects of discussion in these circles. This is similar to the “free-readers” community that gathers around newspaper vendors. Here, “experts” on all problems affecting Nigeria commune, freely dishing out terrific “solutions” to national problems. In all these places, spatial contestation and negotiation are salient until rivalry ensues among actors.

In that competition for space, humans compete with plastics, gadgets, remnants, and verminous rodents—an obvious spectacle of the city’s exhaustion. The effusive smells from the combustion of fuel from vehicular movement and the trail of malodorous air left by refuse collectors—an agency of the state called LAWMA—saturate the atmosphere. This presents an added layer of spatial contestation for residents. During rush hour, faced with limited available space, Lagosians compete for the scanty seats on arriving buses. Here, one’s agility, strength, and luck are the deciding factors for success. The euphemism “one chance” describes the unfortunate fate of a pedestrian who enters the wrong bus, where the occupants are criminals. In the 1990s, many were reported missing or robbed in one of those late-evening, stranded situations after taking the “one-chance” buses.

The Preacher’s Claim

In another place, the preacher engages in a stage play. His voice blares through the air, a sacred call to piety—to the heathen and the unrepentant. This is the outer expression of the preacher, but the symbolism of the call is transcendental to the listener. It is a call to commitment, to faith, to dedication—to align with a divine being that the preacher professes is the hearer’s fate to embrace.

The preacher is in the streets, bus stops, and markets, at the top of his voice, making the call for change—forewarning of an impending doom for the unbeliever here and in the hereafter. In this chaotic matrix, the hearer is accused of having a failed status before the divine, a status he is urged to admit. Guilt! The anguish of his soul is a consequence of his fallen state, which he must reconcile. But behind this spectacle lies a commandeering of space—the politics of geography. The uninterested party is not spared. He is a hypocrite, an unbeliever, or the devil himself if he challenges the invasion of his thoughts and atmosphere. So, who owns the space? The preacher or the inhabitants?

In this stage play, the preacher foams at the mouth to the rhythm of music—a mounted speaker bellows Pentecostal lyrics. The street is a stage for performance—theatrics, roles, and power merge here. “They call this place Lagos”—a place you are challenged to “show” yourself in a contest for space.

Conclusion

In all of this, families suffer from this problem of a highly compacted geographical arrangement that excites sexual hormones. A recent report showed that one in four families in Lagos has experienced paternity fraud. Biology intersects with geography here: the landlord-to-tenant’s-wife relationship, tenant-tenant affairs, and the transitory or makeshift arenas where artisans, drivers, and food and alcohol vendors congregate daily. Here, sexual exchanges and transactions are enabled. These stories are different from the leaked videos of office affairs that occasionally surface on Facebook and Threads. This is the story of living here—”They call this place Lagos.”