FESTAC village in state of disrepair

MaTaZ ArIsInG
Dallas, Texas

I was in FESTAC over the weekend and I was disappointed by the state of dilapidation of the place. This was a model and modern town built in 1977 originally by the Yakubu Gowon military regime and completed by the Obasanjo military administration in readiness for the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture in 1977 with the acronym of FESTAC ‘77.

I had not been to the place for a couple of years so the mental picture I had of the place was when it was still well kept. The state of total disrepair and despair says something about us as a people. Suppose some of the foreigners who lived there during the 1977 festival came back to Lagos and decided to visit what was a beautiful place they were lodged  in found to their dismay what I discovered last week to my embarrassment and chagrin?

Nigeria and particularly Lagos despite our sordid reputation of bribery and corruption, and sadly filth, has of recent gained the attention of young tourists especially during the Christmas celebrations and the so-called “Detty December” period. Must we add to whatever names we have acquired as a people who are absolutely daft that they cannot maintain simple houses and roads? Most of the roads in  FESTAC have broken down and are flooded with brackish water from the open and broken down sewage. These were buildings that should have been repaired by those who bought them from government.

I was told by a responsible resident that the problem may be due to the question of ownership of the place. It seems ab initio that FESTAC was owned by the federal government but the federal government cannot be expected to be maintaining some parts of a state capital. To whom do the residents of FESTAC pay their taxes? Are they subjected to the same land use levy residents of Lagos   pay to the Lagos State government yearly? If they are not, then something is wrong and the people in FESTAC must ask for the transfer of their estate from the federal government to the Lagos State government after which they should expect to benefit from regular yearly maintenance after paying their taxes and appropriate levy of urban charges.

I also discovered these FESTAC houses have passed from hand to hand and those living there are tenants who brought their village lives and culture to the place thereby bringing the well planned development to their pedestal level. To cut a long story short, FESTAC has joined the group of urban squalor for which Nigeria is famous for.  If FESTAC is like this, one wonders what Satellite Town will be like. It was always bigger than FESTAC and less well planned and developed than FESTAC and probably has the same problem of duality of ownership of state and federal jurisdictions.

I hope the issue of decay and despair has not reared its ugly head there also. It reminds me what an academic colleague of mine from Canada told me about our towns in 1968 that they were the biggest slums he had ever seen. I was of course furious and upset and I nearly came to blows with him for what I regarded as a putdown of my country while I was studying in his own country. But the guy was probably right in hindsight. The problem of people flooding, yes that is the right word, into Lagos from all over Nigeria and the west coast of Africa down to the Cameroons and the Congos, Chad, Niger and Burkina Faso is the real issue.

How does one stop internal and external immigration into a city which many of them regard as a province of opportunity, “the big Apple”. At least the Immigration Department could be made to tighten up its belt and prevent undocumented people from flooding into Lagos from neighbouring countries. As for fellow Nigerians coming into Lagos, there is no solution except if development in other places rises to the point of ability to absorb the hundreds of thousands of people streaming out of our secondary schools and higher institutions yearly. Many of them come to Lagos to swell the ranks of urban proletariat. It is actually a miracle that the level of crime is still what the police can cope with.

But I must commend the effort of Lagos State governments over the years for their stupendous effort in the improvement of the physical infrastructure of Lagos. As a resident of Lagos city, one cannot but notice the changes in the city. The flyovers have definitely changed the face of Lagos from Agege, Ikeja, Ilupeju to  Oshodi, Yaba, Surulere, Ebute Metta, Iddo  not to talk  of  Lekki, Victoria Island and the old Lagos of Broad Street, Marina and other places like Victoria Island extension, Apapa and Isale-Eko and the real Lagos  which will  need huge amount of money and Herculean efforts to fix. But Lagos and the federal government must do something to stop the indiscriminate migration to Lagos before the city is killed. This will require developing all the ports that can relieve Lagos of being the entrepôt of the country. Port Harcourt, Onne, Forcados, Burutu Warri, Aiyetoro, Epe and Badagry could be developed to handle some of the tasks that Lagos carry and with this will over the time, attract the crowd hanging everywhere in Lagos. This will take time but we as a country must have a plan to diversify our coastal entry and outlet. This is what serious governments do all over the world and this lies squarely in the province of the Ministry of the Marine and Blue Economy!

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