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article :: power generation
Sitting on 3577 square kilometers of coastal plain along Nigeria’s south-western Atlantic seaboard, the settlement has always possessed a peculiar appeal, even from the time when it became a British colony in 1861. Over the years, it became Nigeria’s earliest central business district (CBD), spreading from the Marina-Broad Street (Ehingbeti) district, taking in Lagos Harbour, the European Piers, the financial market, the seat of colonial government, and the location of major local and foreign conglomerates and transnational corporations.
One-and-a-half centuries later, although Lagos remains the smallest of Nigeria’s 36 regional administrative states, it is, at the same time, the most populous. Covering barely 5 per cent of the country’s land area, the state has always been home to between 5 and 8 per cent of the total population. The metropolitan area, home to more than 75 per cent of the state’s population, also accounts for more than one third (36.8 per cent) of Nigeria’s urban residents.
In a region where unprecedented urbanization rates have brazenly outstripped the global average, Nigeria’s former capital, Lagos, remains an enigma to both visitors and those charged with the management of Africa’s most populous city. Misunderstood by many but passionately loved by its citizens, Lagos has always been the subject of extreme emotions. Some call it an ‘an urban jungle’, others see it as an explosive place that is losing the battle to catch up with itself. But hate it or love it, stay or leave it, Lagos is the engine room driving national and regional growth, a place to which more migrants flock than any other city in the entire sub-region.