Population explosion: the beckon of bright lights!
Everyday people escaping a dreary rural existence pour into Nigerian cities in flood like proportions. They come clutching their dreams as tightly and as dearly as the bags containing their favored items.
Some these dreams are realized, others become nightmares.
I am an urban migrant myself. City life here in Lagos is not just fast but dizzyingly so. Lagos is a very energetic city. Rush hour isn’t happening only at the odd morning or evening hour but at every tick on the clock. With short breaks observed only between the dangerous interval between midnight and dawn.
Lagos is one city bearing more than its fair share of the country’s population. Its infrastructures are the most overworked. They are not even allowed rest during weekends.
It’s a city whose economics mocks the law of gravity. Prices of commodities are always in the high like its many street urchins whose daily diet is spiced by weed.
Housing for instance, as soon as a structure sprouts from the earth and there is constant activity to suggest that the builders are intent on completion in the shortest possible time, there will be an army of house seekers waiting to invade.
The ones who get keys to the apartments are usually the highest bidders in the auction.
Just as much, as soon as an area in the outskirts start seeing development, it takes very little time before it becomes another noisy and over populated bee hive. Like a festering sore, the same ugliness of overcrowding, clustered buildings, aggressive street trading, touting etc is replicated.
Just as rural dwellers buy a bus ticket to a modern life in the cities even so do urban dwellers buy plane tickets, usually one way, to less chaotic, more structured, better regulated, better planned life in the more advanced cities of the West.
All a rural dweller needs to make up his mind about leaving is to see pictures from friends and neighbors who have moved. The shine, the background buildings etc are hard to resist. Modern inventions like radio, TV, glossy magazines and very recently the Internet fuel this migratory trend. Everyone will only like to call home the place that offers the most comfort and prosperity.
As these cities get obese with no let up in their intake, is there a possibility of an explosion?
Was the last census only used as a tool to demand a larger share in the national cake by over populated cities?
Do the people in Government concern themselves with this or are they more concerned about making sure that the engine of growth of the Western world lacks no oil?
Some these dreams are realized, others become nightmares.
I am an urban migrant myself. City life here in Lagos is not just fast but dizzyingly so. Lagos is a very energetic city. Rush hour isn’t happening only at the odd morning or evening hour but at every tick on the clock. With short breaks observed only between the dangerous interval between midnight and dawn.
Lagos is one city bearing more than its fair share of the country’s population. Its infrastructures are the most overworked. They are not even allowed rest during weekends.
It’s a city whose economics mocks the law of gravity. Prices of commodities are always in the high like its many street urchins whose daily diet is spiced by weed.
Housing for instance, as soon as a structure sprouts from the earth and there is constant activity to suggest that the builders are intent on completion in the shortest possible time, there will be an army of house seekers waiting to invade.
The ones who get keys to the apartments are usually the highest bidders in the auction.
Just as much, as soon as an area in the outskirts start seeing development, it takes very little time before it becomes another noisy and over populated bee hive. Like a festering sore, the same ugliness of overcrowding, clustered buildings, aggressive street trading, touting etc is replicated.
Just as rural dwellers buy a bus ticket to a modern life in the cities even so do urban dwellers buy plane tickets, usually one way, to less chaotic, more structured, better regulated, better planned life in the more advanced cities of the West.
All a rural dweller needs to make up his mind about leaving is to see pictures from friends and neighbors who have moved. The shine, the background buildings etc are hard to resist. Modern inventions like radio, TV, glossy magazines and very recently the Internet fuel this migratory trend. Everyone will only like to call home the place that offers the most comfort and prosperity.
As these cities get obese with no let up in their intake, is there a possibility of an explosion?
Was the last census only used as a tool to demand a larger share in the national cake by over populated cities?
Do the people in Government concern themselves with this or are they more concerned about making sure that the engine of growth of the Western world lacks no oil?
Labels: Population
posted by Vessel of Mercy at
5:56 PM
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