King44:
You are wrong, the gt didn't fail these people.

Abi, how would you justify the actions of some people who left their villages and towns in other states moved to Lagos and bigger cities only to start living in shacks, on water, under the bridge etc. The govt didn't fail this set of people, they failed themselves.

Moving to bigger cities when there is no house, no one you are going there to live with only to start living under the bridge is a crime.
Funny enough ,that market under d bridge has been in existence since time immemorial,Tinubu gained massive revenue from it ,Fashola tried to pull d market out but the who is who in Lagos state never allowed it ...it's d people who call themselves d owner of Lagos and are untouchable that owns dat market and collects allocation from the so called squatters ...after all these ,highest 6months or 1year ,the same indigenes will build up those shacks and put it up for rent ... Under bridge market story is bigger than it seems , especially the one of oke Arin ..

Occupying a bridge and making it a home or market is a crime anywhere. If na serious city by now that area would have been cleared, they won't even be there in the first place, when they are caught na cell straight.


I know what Fashola would have done if he was the governor. No serious gvt would tolerate that.

The govt didn't fail this set of people, they failed themselves for emphasis

Reference:
Mega city indeed.
How can you 'mega lift' a city with a poverty rate (<$6.00/day) of 92 percent.
This is the result.
The wanton abuse of the environment and wanton destruction of infrastructure.
We still do not have the wisdom to link poverty to under development.

Segzy22:
Many of them are from one part of Nigeria.
Thousands of them are already on their way to Lagos, Ibadan, Kano even Maiduguri this morning.
They are called children of hates!!!!

Segzy22:
Many of them are from one part of Nigeria.
Thousands of them are already on their way to Lagos, Ibadan, Kano even Maiduguri this morning.
They are called children of hate!!!!

naptu2:


What do you mean by mega city indeed? Do you know the meaning of the term mega city? Do you know that the fact that Lagos is a mega city is one of the causes of this problem?

Reference:


You very well know what I mean.
The very Nigerian and third world context and why I placed it in inverted commas.
That where you have a crowd you automatically have prosperity whereas the facts on ground are completely at variance.
And because of that the environment and in this case infrastructure suffers serious abuse.

Abuja is another location where urban slums are growing day by day.
Soon it too will be called a 'mega city' but where cars fall through vandalised manhole covers simply because of poverty.

naptu2:


Actually they do know what a mega city means.


A mega city simply means a city with a population above 10 million people.

This whole talk of "Lagos Mega City" began because an international agency stated (at the end of the 1990s or beginning of the 2000s) that Lagos will be one of the world's 5 biggest cities by 2100.

Due to this projection and the fact that they will need to improve infrastructure in order to meet the demands of such a large population, President Olusegun Obasanjo, along with Governors Bola Tinubu and Gbenga Daniel launched the Lagos-Ogun Mega City Project. The headquarters of the commission was on Queens Drive in Ikoyi. The project was meant to include the construction of a railway system that would run through Lagos and Ogun and there were several other projects attached to it.

Bola Tinubu and Olusegun Obasanjo left office. There was a bit of friction between Governor Fashola and Governor Daniel and reporters asked Fashola if the Lagos-Ogun Mega City Project was dead. Fashola's response was this:

He said that the mega city was not a project, but rather a status that was conferred on Lagos by the size of its population. He said that this large population brings challenges and it means that the government must find a means to provide healthcare for this large population (more and better equipped hospitals), it must find a way to move this large population (more means of transportation, like railways, ferries, etc.), it must be able to provide security for this large population (more policemen and police stations), etc.

However, many people have since assumed that the term mega city means, "the best city", it does not.

naptu2:
1) Lagos

1A) Mega City part 1

In the 1950s and 1960s, experts from the United Nations conducted a study and stated that there are certain cities in the developing world that would become the biggest cities in the world (population wise) in the not to distant future. They proposed that metro systems should be built in these cities in order to cope with the projected population.

I read the report decades ago and at the moment I can only remember 2 of the cities that were mentioned and these were Cairo and Lagos.

There were a series of studies and reports by foreign experts and the reports were presented to Governor Ebitu Ukiwe. Governor Ukiwe said that they should be presented to his successor to decide what he wanted to do with them.

Governor Lateef Jakande took the reports and was very serious about implementing them. The route for the Lagos Metroline was determined and the right of way was secured. However, there was a problem.

The problem that I'm going to describe below occurred on two occasions 30 years apart (1983 and 2013). There has been a lot of speculation about the problem and people have used it as a propaganda tool for partisan political warfare. If you've followed this thread then you'll know that there was serious friction between the NPN led Federal Government and the UPN led Lagos State Government. If you've followed the news in recent years then you'll also know about the battles between the APC and the PDP. I'm not going to go into those battles, rather I'll simply tell you about the economic arguments that were put forward and then I'll leave you to decide if they were valid or if people were just playing politics.

As I said, the right of way had been determined, but the project was stalled by funding issue. 70% of the project was meant to be funded via loans, while the Lagos State Government provided 10% and investors provided the balance, but the Lagos State Government needed a Federal Government guarantee before it could access the loans. In fact, it also needed Federal Government approval before it could release its funds (the 10%) which was with the Central Bank. The problem was that the Federal Government did not give the required guarantee or approval.

There were all kinds of rumours about why the Federal Government refused to approve the funds (some said that it was because Jakande did not congratulate Shagari on his re-election) but Governor Jakande decided to go straight to State House Dodan Barracks, rather than listen to rumours.

President Shagari told Governor Jakande that the delay in providing the approvals was caused by issues at the Central Bank and that he was scheduled to have a meeting with the CBN Governor later that day over this same issue. Jakande said (in the documentary that was broadcast on his birthday sometime in the 2000s) that he felt that the issue was very important, so he decided to wait at Dodan Barracks until the CBN Governor arrived for the meeting.

The CBN Governor, Abdulkadir Ahmed, said that Lagos State could not withdraw all the money that it wanted and the Federal Government could not guarantee the entire loan at that time because of the economic crisis and fuel crisis in the country (remember that this was just after the 1982 oil doom and economic collapse began). He said that Jakande could make smaller withdrawals as many times as he wanted, but that they couldn't give him everything he wanted at once.

There was a coup on December 31st, 1983 and both Shagari and Jakande were removed from office. The new military government set up a committee to review all projects that had been embarked upon by the previous civilian government (due to the financial crisis that was caused by the collapse of oil prices and the incredible level of debt that Nigeria had previously taken) and the committee recomended that the Metroline project should be halted because the country couldn't take on any more debt.

1B) Multi-modal transport

The Metroline project is often talked about, but it was not the only major transportation project that was embarked upon by the Jakande administration.

A few years ago I saw a post on Nairaland that both annoyed me and made me laugh. A Nairalander was complaining that Governor Fashola was building a ferry jetty at Osborne Road. He said that the ferry jetty would cause traffic jams and security concerns for residents of Osborne Foreshore Estate. The post angered me and made me laugh because the Nairalander did not know the origin of that jetty.

My morning commute during the Jakande era sometimes involved dropping someone off at Falomo and then taking Kingsway Road and Osborne Road to link Ring Road and then on to Marina. I passed by that area almost everyday. Osborne Road was right beside the water at that time. You could clearly see the Lagos Lagoon and Ikorodu in the distance (across the water). There was no Osborne Foreshore Estate at that time.

Governor Jakande launched a ferry service in 1983. There were two boats named Baba Kekere and Ita Faji that ran the CMS to Mile 2 route. He also planned to expand the ferry service to include places like Ikorodu, Epe, Ikoyi and Victoria Island. The Osborne jetty was built because of that plan. This was in 1983 when there was no Osborne Foreshore Estate.

The Foreshore Estate project began in the late 1980s when the Lagos State Government began sandfilling the water beside Osborne Road. The Federal Government stepped in and tried to take over the project, but the Lagos State Government sued them (this shocked me. I didn't realise that a state government could sue the Federal Military Government). President Ibrahim Babangida subsequently issued a decree that made all land on the shores of inland waterways the property of the Federal Government. All these happened when Babangida was president and Rasaki was governor. The case dragged on till the early 2000s when the Supreme Court ruled that the land belonged to the Lagos State Government and that Babangida's decree did not exist when the lawsuit began and it could not take retroactive effect.

General Babangida's administration initiated the Federal Integrated Urban Mass Transit Programme. The basic idea was to get people to use the waterways and railways in order to reduce the traffic jams on the roads.

The President launched the ferry service at the renovated Marina Jetty. Several new and refurbished green and white boats were used for the service and passengers were taken from Marina to Mile 2 and Apapa. They also talked about using the Ikoyi Jetty, but I don't think that it was actually used.

Remember that this was during the SAP era and the economic crisis was biting hard. One of the aims of SAP was to get Nigerians to use locally produced goods (besides, we had no money to buy foreign goods) and so, instead of buying foreign trains and getting foreigners to repair our tracks, NRC engineers converted a Peugeot J5 bus into a locomotive and used it to pull trains from Lagos to Ibadan. Some of the old locomotives were also repaired by NRC engineers and the engineers also rehabilitated the tracks.

The idea was that people should be able to live in Ibadan and work in Lagos and so the trains ran regular services between the two cities. President Babangida actually took a train ride from Lagos to Ibadan after commissioning the service. I remember the clip that was shown on the NTA News. It reminded me of a World War 2 movie. There were many WW2 movies that showed soldiers hanging from trains as they were being transported towards the warfront. In the clip of President Babangida's train, I saw soldiers dressed in their full battle suits 9with ballistic helmets on) standing at the entrances to the carriages as the train made its way to Ibadan.

You might remember that at the beginning of this piece I told you that, back in the early 1960s, some UN experts had recommended that Lagos, Cairo and some other cities in the developing world should have metro systems. The Cairo Metro was started in 1980 and the first section of the first line was completed in 1987. The first line was completed in 1989 and it was commissioned in 1991 by. . .by. . .President Ibrahim Babangida of Nigeria.

You see, Cairo hosted the 1991 All Africa Games and President Hosni Mubarak decided that he wanted a truly African celebration, therefore, he invited a lot of important and famous people from all over the continent to the opening ceremony.

The Nobel laurate, Professor Wole Soyinka, was invited from Nigeria, South African writer, Nadine Gordimer, was also invited (if I remember correctly, the games were still on when it was announced that she had won the Nobel Prize) and the special guest of honour was President Ibrahim Babangida of Nigeria.

(My dad jokingly prayed that President Babangida should not be at the stadium when we played our first match because Babangida usually brought bad luck to the Eagles. He wasn't at the stadium and we did very well in the tournament and won the bronze medal. That's when Emmanuel Amunike was discovered and he signed a contract with Zamalek immediately after the tournament).

President Babangida commissioned the Cairo Metro and he and President Mubarak rode in one of the trains. This was shown on the NTA News. As you can expect, Nigerian newspapers had a field day. The newspapers wondered how President Babangida felt when he was commissioning the metro, considering the fact that there was no such metro in Nigeria.


1C) Mega City Part 2

There wasn't really any push towards implementing a multi-modal system of transportation during the Abacha years. It was after democracy returned in 1999 that things kicked off again.

A report was released sometime in the late 1990s or early 2000s which stated that Lagos will be one of the ten largest megacities in the world by 2050. This report led to reactions at the federal and state level.

The reactions at the federal level were not only caused by the report, but also by a meeting that President Olusegun Obasanjo had with business leaders.

The business leaders told President Obasanjo that Lagos is the commercial capital of Nigeria and it is very important to the country's economy, yet infrastructure in Lagos is very poor. They talked about poor transport infrastructure and the perennial traffic jams that almost paralyse the city, poor electricity supply that forces them to generate their own electricity at great cost, security problems, etc.

Therefore, President Obasanjo convened another meeting with Governor Bola Tinubu of Lagos, Governor Gbenga Daniel of Ogun State and some federal officials. The President asked the governors to state the problems that they were encountering and Governor Tinubu spoke about the problems that were created by the Federal Government. He condemned the Federal Government over its actions in the Ferma vs Lastma crisis, the withholding of local government funds and other such issues and explained that these were among the major problems faced by Lagos.

Chief Anthony Anenih began replying Tinubu (basically, he was criticising the governor), but President Obasanjo stopped him and said that this was not a time for partisan politics and that they were there to solve the problems that plagued Nigerians.

Anyway, this meeting led to the creation of the Lagos-Ogun Megacity Commission. The commission was headed by Professor Akin Mabogunje, one of Nigeria's foremost town planners and geographers and its headquarters was on Queen's Drive in Ikoyi.

Remember that, at this time the City of Lagos had expanded not only population wise, but geographically to include places like Mowe and Ibafo in Ogun State and that's why Ogun State was included in the project.

The Lagos-Ogun Megacity Commission was to oversee the Lagos-Ogun Megacity Project, which included things like a metro line that would run through the two states, improvement of houses and roads in the border areas between the two states, etc.

However, before the project could gain any ground, President Obasanjo and Governor Tinubu left office in 2007.

There was a lot of friction between the ACN government of Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola of Lagos and the PDP government of Governor Gbenga Daniel of Ogun State. They clashed over control of the border areas, over payment of taxes (Ogun State insisted that people that lived in Mowe, Ibafo, etc and worked in Lagos must pay their income taxes to the Ogun State Government) and over other issues. It seemed like the Lagos-Ogun Megacity Project was dead.

Journalists asked Governor Babatunde Fashola if the project was dead and he said something that I have been trying to make people understand for a long time (before he said it and after he said it). He said that the Lagos Megacity is not a project, rather it is a recognition that Lagos will be one of the largest megacities in the world by virtue of its population and therefore strategies must be put in place to solve the problems that will be caused by having such a huge population in Lagos. I'm going to explain it in my own words.

What is a megacity? A megacity is defined as a city with a population of more than 10 million people. Lagos is a megacity because it has more than 10 million people living in it. It is projected that it will be one of the 10 largest megacities in the world by 2050. This large population creates a lot of problems and the government must look for a way to solve those problems.

For example, one of the estimates is that there will be over 32 million people living in Lagos by 2050. How will these people move around. If the idea is that everybody should have a car, then everybody will be trapped in an unending traffic jam. If the idea is that we should depend solely on the roads (including using danfo buses) then the city will be trapped in one huge gridlock.

How will you provide houses for 32 million people? How will you provide hospitals/bed space for 32 million people? How will you provide enough schools for the large number of children that will live in Lagos in 2050? How will you cope with the increase in demand for electricity? How will you provide enough well equipped policemen to meet the challenges posed by such a large population? How will you dispose of the waste that is create by so many people? How will you ensure that such a large number of people do not negatively affect the environment?

These are the questions that governments in Lagos have been trying to answer with projects like the multi-modal transport systems (the City Bus experiment, BRT, LRT [rail], ferry, etc), the Lagos Homs, Millennium Schools, the various independent power projects, the Rapid Response Squad (RRS), the parks and gardens, etc.

Some people have seen these projects and mistakenly believed that the term megacity means "the best city" or "the most developed city", but that's not what it means. It simply means a city with a population of over 10 million, that is, a very large (mega) city.




TO BE CONTINUED


There's something interesting about the projections in the table below (and similar other projections). In the past and at the moment, the biggest megacities were/are in the developed world, but in the future, the biggest megacities will be in the developing world. How will developing countries afford to take care of such a large population?

treamabenh:
If they have homes they won’t be crashing under the Bridge na, the government have failed the people, everyone in government knows they’re a big failure, it’s their egos that won’t allow them admit.

treamabenh:
If they have homes they won’t be crashing under the Bridge na, the government have failed the people, everyone in government knows they’re a big failure, it’s their egos that won’t allow them admit.

seanwilliam:


I can see you’re a PayPal vendor right? You sent her money before she sent funds to you or what ??

UselessBuharist:
Vacate to where na, I guess to other areas to begin crime.

treamabenh:
If they have homes they won’t be crashing under the Bridge na, the government have failed the people, everyone in government knows they’re a big failure, it’s their egos that won’t allow them admit.

joetem:


some of these peeps are better off in their villages than staying in Lagos

treamabenh:
If they have homes they won’t be crashing under the Bridge na, the government have failed the people, everyone in government knows they’re a big failure, it’s their egos that won’t allow them admit.

BlueRayDick:
The government all of a sudden is playing to the gallery feigning ignorance as if they never knew squatters have been occupying under the bridge illegally since time immemorial...smh

It will Interest u to know that the government collects rates/taxes from these traders. Now yawa Don gas they are forming team proactive.Anyways it’s better late than never if that will avert future occurrences,

The government should not stop at this apongbon but eject those in other under bridges , the mechanics using the place as workshop at obalende, iponri underbridge used as carwash, and other parts of Lagos

treamabenh:
If they have homes they won’t be crashing under the Bridge na, the government have failed the people, everyone in government knows they’re a big failure, it’s their egos that won’t allow them admit.

Segzy22:
Many of them are from one part of Nigeria.
Thousands of them are already on their way to Lagos, Ibadan, Kano even Maiduguri this morning.
They are called children of hates!!!!

GloriousGbola:


This here.

The fooking local govt chairmen are more concerned with collecting undocumented tax receipts than with enforcing any kind of order.

Same way multiple walkways and roads all over lagos have been converted to okada Park, market, etc.

One literally sees as they start to grow one stall at a time, like cancer, until they have metasized into a full grown market blocking a road. If the lga is finally forced to intervene, there are cries of wickedness etal.

And they have their right to complain as local govt as been collecting tax revenue from them

Tinubus Lagos

backnbeta:
Rural-urban migration is one of the most distressing problems facing the Nigerian socio- economic development and rural development is the solution to the problem. Even though these people appear helpless, homeless, hopeless, I still think they should leave their "under bridge" homes for safety reasons at least. Everyone can't relocate to the cities, our state governors should begin to take development of rural areas more seriously to reduce the rural-urban migration. If your state is habitable, just migrate to your own state capital at least, why migrate from thousands of kilometers to come and live under the bridge in faraway Lagos? It is well

treamabenh:
If they have homes they won’t be crashing under the Bridge na, the government have failed the people, everyone in government knows they’re a big failure, it’s their egos that won’t allow them admit.

Chuksmonika:
your hate for Igbos will be your undoing..keep on being stupid!

Sheuns:
Only Fashola made Laws and ensured the enforcement. You people will make laws and will not follow through in enforcement. About two years ago motorcycles were banned in some part of Lagos, barely 3 months later they returned and now constitute serious nuisance all over Lagos, even on expressways riding against traffic.

From Mile 2 to Second rainbow down to Oshodi you’ll see bikes plying one way and parked on the expressway, nobody is saying anything or doing anything cos of nonsense politics. These guys cannot ride bikes in the North they came from cos they’ve been banned in most northern states but here in Lagos when you try to arrest them, they gang up to attack the police and even killing some in worst cases.

Lagos state government really need to check these guys and control this their silly activities.

Segzy22:
I preferred to be stupid than to marry a
Igbo lady

uuzba:

But they won't hear.
They still want to carry that prestige of "I'm based in Lagos"...
Just like Nigerians in Dubai and London Prisons...

treamabenh:
If they have homes they won’t be crashing under the Bridge na, the government have failed the people, everyone in government knows they’re a big failure, it’s their egos that won’t allow them admit.

treamabenh:
If they have homes they won’t be crashing under the Bridge na, the government have failed the people, everyone in government knows they’re a big failure, it’s their egos that won’t allow them admit.