Lagos

• 1. The City Of Lakes

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  Lagos sits at the southwest mouth of Lagos Lagoon, protected from the Atlantic Ocean by barrier islands and long sand spits that stretch up to 100 km east and west. Estimates put its population somewhere between 17 and 21 million residents. That makes it the most populous urban area on the entire African continent.

  The name itself is borrowed. Lagos comes from the Portuguese word for lakes, most likely named after Lagos, Portugal, the main centre of Portuguese maritime expeditions down the African coast in the 15th century. But the people who lived here first called it something else entirely.

  The Awori people, an Ijebu subgroup of the Yoruba, settled on a farmstead along the coastal line in and around the present-day islands. Farmstead translates to Ereko in Yoruba, and from that comes the indigenous name Eko, still used by Yoruba people today. How did a coastal farmstead become one of the fastest-growing megacities in the world? Why is no one sure how many people actually live here? And how did a city this large end up with no single government to run it?

• 2. A City Without A City Hall

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  Lagos is not a single municipality and has no overall city administration. The former Municipality of Lagos covered Lagos Island, Ikoyi, and Victoria Island, plus some mainland territory, all managed by the Lagos City Council. That council was disbanded in 1976 and divided into several Local Government Areas.

  The geographical city limits of Metropolitan Lagos now comprise 16 of the 20 Local Government Areas of Lagos State. The state government provides overall government for the metropolitan region. It handles roads and transportation, power, water, health, and education across the conurbation.

  The 1970s Nigerian oil boom triggered a population explosion, untamed economic growth, and heavy rural migration. Outlying towns and settlements such as Mushin, Ikeja, and Agege grew rapidly and merged into the present-day Metropolitan Lagos. By 2006, the metro area had spread beyond Lagos State's boundaries entirely.

  This larger spread is called Greater Metropolitan Lagos, a continuously built-up area of an additional 1535.4 km2. It spills into adjoining Ogun State, into Local Government Areas such as Obafemi Owode, Sagamu, Ifo, Ado-Odo/Ota, and part of Ewekoro. The city had quietly outgrown the map drawn for it.

• 3. The Numbers War

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  The 2006 National Population Census credited Metropolitan Lagos with 7,937,932 people, a figure lower than anticipated that created controversy in Nigeria. Lagos Island, the historic centre, recorded a population of 212,700. Authorities of Lagos State disputed these results, accusing the Nigerian National Population Commission of undercounting.

  The Lagos State Government ran its own parallel census for social planning. It put the population of Lagos State at 17,553,924, and reasoned that metropolitan Lagos held about 15.5 million of that. The National Population Commission denied the undercounting accusation.

  A study by Africapolis, the African subsidiary of e-Geopolis backed by the Agence francaise de developpement, cross-referenced official figures with independent research. It concluded that the 2006 census figures of about 9 million for Lagos State were valid and the state's own assessments were inflated.

  The growth itself is not disputed. The Lagos area gains some 3,000 people daily, around 1.1 million annually. In 1999, the United Nations predicted the metropolitan area, home to only about 290,000 inhabitants in 1950, would exceed 20 million by 2010. With that pace, Lagos may have overtaken Kinshasa as Africa's most populous city.

• 4. Island And Mainland

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  The Island is separated from the Mainland by the main channel draining the lagoon into the Atlantic Ocean, forming Lagos Harbour. It is really a collection of islands divided by creeks and joined by bridges. Most business activities, entertainment, and upscale residential areas are concentrated here, in Local Government Areas such as Lagos Island and Eti-Osa.

  Lagos Island holds the central business district, dense with high-rise buildings, alongside wholesale marketplaces like the Idumota and Balogun Markets. It also contains the National Museum of Nigeria, the Central Mosque, and the Oba's Palace, known as Iga Idunganran. Tinubu Square sits here too, where the Amalgamation Ceremony that unified the North and South protectorates into Nigeria took place in 1914.

  Ikoyi occupies the eastern half of Lagos Island, joined by a landfill and connected to Victoria Island by the Falomo bridge over Five Cowrie creek. Once a middle class neighbourhood, it has become a fashionable enclave for the upper class, holding military and police barracks, a top-security prison, and one of Africa's largest golf courses.

  The Lekki Peninsula stretches from the Lekki toll gate, the focal stage of the #EndSars protest in October 2020, out to Ibeju-Lekki. Three major bridges link the Island to the Mainland: the Carter Bridge from Iddo, the Eko Bridge, and the Third Mainland Bridge. Construction on a Fourth Mainland Bridge was set to start in 2022, according to Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu.

• 5. Africa's Silicon Valley

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  Five of the seven African tech companies said to hold unicorn status, worth over 1 billion euros, are based in Lagos. Flutterwave works in virtual bank cards. Opay and Interswitch run online booking platforms. Andela trains software engineers, and Jumia is an online retailer of electronics and fashion. Lagos is home to more tech hubs than any other city in Africa.

  The city generates around 30-35% of Nigeria's GDP, with most commercial and financial business carried out in the island's central business district. The four largest banks in West and Central Africa are headquartered here. Zenith Bank, Access Bank, Guaranty Trust Bank, and First Bank each hold capital of more than US$2 billion.

  Lagos is the only African city to have both a Google and a Microsoft office, with much of the technology activity centred on the Yaba district. With more than 90 million internet users, the city attracts investors chasing an expanding technology hotspot. Startupgrind.com calls it Africa's Silicon Valley.

  Yves Bellinghausen from the German magazine ZEIT summarised it this way: 'Lagos is Africa's Hollywood, Manhattan, and Silicon Valley all rolled into one.' The globalisation of its economy is rated beta minus by the GaWC, equivalent to Manchester or Edinburgh in the UK.

• 6. Nollywood And The Night

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  The film industry in the Surulere locality ranks second or third in the world, ahead of or behind Hollywood depending on the survey. PricewaterhouseCoopers forecasts the Nigerian entertainment industry will grow 85% to $15 billion. Since the success of the thriller The Figurine, Nigerian film has turned to high-quality productions that are also commercially successful.

  New box office records followed: 2009's The Figurine, 2013's Half of a Yellow Sun, 2016's The Wedding Party, and 2023's Battle on Buka Street. Lagos itself appears in foreign films too. The 2016 film Captain America: Civil War contains a scene set in Lagos, and the fact-based 93 Days with Danny Glover recounts the 2014 Ebola outbreak, filmed at original locations.

  James Brown performed in Lagos in 1970. With his band Wings, Paul McCartney recorded his fifth post-Beatles album, Band on the Run, in an EMI studio in Lagos in August and September 1973. The city has given birth to styles such as Sakara music, highlife, juju, fuji, and Afrobeats.

  Nightlife once centred on Yaba, Ikeja, and Surulere, but more clubs have sprung up on the Island, around Victoria Island, Ikate, and Lekki Phase 1. The Surulere district remains the centre of the Nigerian film industry, and many films are shot in the Festac area, which also hosted the World Festival of Black Arts.

• 7. The Rising Water

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  A 2019 paper in PLOS One estimated that under a moderate climate scenario, the Lagos of 2050 would most closely resemble the current climate of Panama City. The annual temperature would rise by 1.6 degrees, and the warmest month by 1.5 degrees. The city sits near the equator with only slight seasonal variation, mean highs ranging from 28 to 32 C.

  The 2022 IPCC Sixth Assessment Report named Lagos among 12 major African cities most severely affected by sea level rise. The list includes Abidjan, Alexandria, Algiers, Cape Town, Casablanca, Dakar, Dar es Salaam, Durban, Lome, Luanda, and Maputo. Together they could sustain cumulative damage of US$65 billion under the moderate scenario by 2050.

  The danger is compounded from below. Sea level rise in Lagos is being exacerbated by subsidence, occurring at up to 87 mm per year. Since sea level rise would continue for about 10,000 years under every scenario, future costs would only increase without adaptation measures.

  The water problem is already daily life. Tap water is not suitable for drinking, and the distribution network is often contaminated. The raw water in the lagoon is too polluted, so the city draws its supply from the Ogun and Owo rivers, while many residents live in slums without piped water or sanitation at all.

• 8. Life In The Megacity

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  From 2024 through 2026, Lagos featured each year in Time Out magazine's list of the 50 Best Cities in the World, based on a survey of locals. In the 2024 survey, 96 percent of respondents said they were happy, and every year over two-thirds said it was easy to make friends in Lagos. Other rankings tell a harsher story.

  In a 2018 ranking of cities by quality of life, Lagos placed 218th among 241 cities. In 2023 it ranked second only to Manila in a global survey of cities with the lowest quality of life. The source cautions that such index lists often rest on subjective assessments by Europeans or North Americans rather than locally collected data.

  Much of the real economy goes uncounted. According to the International Monetary Fund, about 5.5 million people are employed in the informal economy in Lagos State alone, roughly three-quarters of the workforce. Street vendors, artisans, market traders, and okada motorbike drivers work without minimum wage, holidays, or labour rights.

  Getting around shapes the day. Residents say a car commute can take six times longer than the ferry, and the Ferry Authority recorded about two million passengers per month in 2021. The yellow Danfo minibuses, mostly VW T3 types, define the look of the streets, running fixed routes with no timetable. Above it all rises the National Arts Theatre, its renovation completed in March 2023, its spaceship-like form now a short walk from the Blue Line light rail.