Experience the Megacity Lifestyle in Lagos, Nigeria
When you think of hot tourist destinations chances are that Lagos, Nigeria doesn’t come anywhere near the top of your list. Just because the city isn’t in all the travel magazines doesn’t mean that there aren’t people traveling there. In fact, thousands of people arrive in Lagos each day looking for the opportunity to live a better life and to provide for their families. The result of this mass migration is a city that is bursting at the seems, full of problems and promise. A recent article in the New Yorker magazine begins with this haunting description:
The Third Mainland Bridge is a looping ribbon of concrete that connects Lagos Island to the continent of Africa. It was built in the nineteen-seventies, part of a vast network of bridges, cloverleafs, and expressways intended to transform the districts and islands of this Nigerian city–then comprising three million people–into an efficient modern metropolis. As the bridge snakes over sunken piers just above the waters of Lagos Lagoon, it passes a floating slum: thousands of wooden houses, perched on stilts a few feet above their own bobbing refuse, with rust-colored iron roofs wreathed in the haze from thousands of cooking fires. Fishermen and market women paddle dugout canoes on water as black and viscous as an oil slick. The bridge then passes the sawmill district, where rain-forest logs–sent across from the far shore, thirty miles to the east–form a floating mass by the piers. Smoldering hills of sawdust landfill send white smoke across the bridge, which mixes with diesel exhaust from the traffic. Beyond the sawmills, the old waterfront markets, the fishermen’s shanties, the blackened facades of high-rise housing projects, and the half-abandoned skyscrapers of downtown Lagos Island loom under a low, dirty sky. Around the city, garbage dumps steam with the combustion of natural gases, and auto yards glow with fires from fuel spills. All of Lagos seems to be burning.
Why, you might ask, would you want to visit such a place? The answer: because you can and because it will be an experience. Let’s face it, a trip to Lagos isn’t something that most people would want to endure. It is for that reason alone that you should consider going there. Lagos is emblematic of many megacities in the developing world and it represents the future to some degree. Now is the perfect time to see what lies ahead in the future as more and more people cram into cities in search of a more promising life.
Opodo will fly you from London to Lagos for £434.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, December 12th, 2006 and is filed under Ticket Deals, Airline Deals, Opodo.
Lagos is really an interesting city. The first time visitor to Lagos is usually left in awe at the pace of life in Lagos. But really the bursting of life in Lagos is not so different from what you experience as a first time visitor to Bronx in New York or East London.
Really, why do the western media love to focus on the negatives in Nigeria? Why do they love the slum of Lagos but ignore the order of Abuja?
They portray Lagos as the worst place on earth.
Let’s do a bit of comparison here. Everyone knows that Lagos roads are filled with pot holes. But what most people don’t know is that New York roads are filled with patches and huge bumps the size of an ant hill right in the middle of the road!!! I was scandalised when i saw the bumps!! These are not speed breakers but they are bumps from botched attempts at filling up pot holes on the roads. The bumps especially at Queens are so big that they serve as natural speed breakers. The slum of Bronx is as bad as the Makoko slum in Lagos and mor edangerous too i must add!!!
The traffic in lagos is scary, yes everybody knows that, but have you really experienced the traffic in Manhattan? Goodness, believe me you do not want to be caught dead in it. A trip from Queens that should not last longer than 25mins took us over 3hours and this happened on a sunday!!! I wonder what it would be like on a week day? At least there are no traffic going to Victoria Island on a Sunday. And if you think that Lagos taxi drivers are rough, well you have not seen the drivers of the yellow cabs in New York at work!! The taxi drivers in Manhattan especially are scary!! They disobey traffic lights, change lanes without any warning.
Haa by the way i saw several beggars especially in New York.
London had been reputed to be the city of the angels -at least that is what the western media want us to believe. Have you really seen the crowd coming from a major train station sometimes? Stratford Station is an example. The crowd is frightening. The trains are so slow and dirty!!! It could be sucidal to attempt to go anywhere during the rush hours. The trains are usually over crowded with people returning from work. You cant help but to hold your nose at the strong smell of unwashed bodies and dried sweat in the train and dont try to lower the windows, it wont just help. You have to suffer the smell atleast until you get to your stop.
The New Yorker Magazine is hereby invited to visit Abuja, let them stop being myopic and see that Lagos does not really describe the whole of Nigeria just as New York is not a fair description of US.
Go to www.mapntl.com to generate interactive driving direction map when you get to Nigeria.
By klase | August 18th, 2008 at 4:11 pm 
