IEEE Spectrum June, 2007 - 49

Special RepoRt

MegaCities

HoW NOT
to

make a megacity

Some cities are littered with garbage.
Lagos is littered with corpses By Harry Goldstein

to Probe
Further

58 IEEE Spectrum | June 2007 | NA

www.spectrum.ieee.org

FINbArr o'rEIlly/rEutErS

young man lies dead on
a strip of gravel near a
bus stop. Two men
grip his limp arms and
drag his body toward
the bushes. Maybe he fell out of
an overpacked van-or danfo-a
mode of travel that passes for public transportation here in Lagos,
Nigeria's fast-growing commercial
capital and home to an estimated
15 million people. Or maybe he just
stepped too far out onto the darkened road lined with street lamps
that do not work.
Wrecked cars, burned-out vans,
and the occasional corpse greet
visitors driving along the highway
from the Lagos Murtala Muhammed
International Airport to one of the
four islands-Lagos, Iddo, Ikoyi, and
Victoria-that make up the frenetic
core of this port city, a former slavetrading hub. Here enterprising street
merchants ply the city's infamous A WOMAN WALKS through the Olusosun rubbish dump in Lagos on 18 April 2007. That day a fire tore through the
"go slows"-traffic jams that can shacks of a makeshift village built atop the dump site, leaving many people who scavenge waste material without shelter.
last for hours-hawking cellphone
calling cards, candy, plastic bags of potable (maybe) water, and on the market stands where freshly slaughtered goat carcasses
T-shirts. Three-kilometer trips between islands or to the mainland steam in the sun, obscured by clouds of flies gorging on warm
can take 2 hours, or much more if you foolishly decide not to bribe blood; or on the endless slums whose rusty corrugated metal
the police who demand baksheesh from everyone trying to pass roofs shelter the vast majority of citizens, many of whom subsist
through their intersection.
on less than US $1 per day and who have no access to clean water
Add in another couple of hours of travel time if it is monsoon or sanitation, let alone health care or education.
season. Be prepared to bail water from the floor of your vehicle-
Once you get where you're going, chances are 50-50 that the
the city's drainage system is grossly inadequate and in disrepair. power will be out and that there will be no air-conditioning to
Despite Nigeria's enormous oil wealth, tens of billions of dollars give respite from the sweltering tropical heat, which afflicts this
have gone missing over the years in this country-one of
city every day of the year. Where it exists, the electric
the world's most corrupt-and few investments have been
grid is unreliable at best: the national electric utility, the
made in infrastructure. The streets of Lagos turn into
Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN), is the punch
lakes as fat drops of rain mercilessly pound down on the
line to a bad joke everyone is sick of hearing. Expensive,
For more information,
traffic. When the downpours abate, the massive puddles
dirty, and loud diesel generators supply the power needs
go to http://www.
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become breeding grounds for mosquitoes and malaria.
of those who can afford them, adding to the pall of smog,
jun07/morelagos.
So when traveling in Lagos, sit back and relax. Feast
which produces the spectacular sunsets that precede the
your eyes on the mounds of garbage lining the roads;
impenetrable darkness of this failed city.
n

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