By Tolu Ogunlesi
Lagos has arguably earned for itself a reputation as the face of urban transformation in Nigeria. While there’s still a lot to be done, it is the place that best embodies the possibilities of urban innovation and infrastructural change in Nigeria.
Think for a second about how the city has, over the decades, come to become the byword for urban chaos. You can’t survive in this city without a measure of aggression. On a Monday morning, Fela sang decades ago, Lagos has zero tolerance for nonsense. You can certainly extend that to the remaining six days of the week. Life is a daily excursion into a sense of scarcity heightened by the city’s frightening population.
Yet it’s also clear, looking at a city like Lagos, that over the last decade we have seen some commitment to change. Across the city traffic lights have emerged, as have street name-plates. The government has boldly attempted to tackle the traffic problem with solutions ranging from the BRT buses to LASTMA to a radio station dedicated to providing traffic information. Lagos is now also leading the way in terms of the implementation of public-private partnerships. A security fund ensures that the police get more vehicles and equipment than it can afford by itself.
The question that follows is this: are the people changing alongside their city? Is the improving city getting citizens with improved attitudes and behaviour?
Let’s look at Lagos’ traffic challenge for example, and the way we all contribute to the fulfilment of that unwritten law that says: For every obstructed lane in Lagos at least one illegal one gets formed within thirty seconds.
Also think for example of the ways in which landlords discriminate against potential tenants on the basis of ethnicity or marital status. And in which tenants exasperate landlords by delaying rents or misusing the property in their care. On a house-hunt years ago, I recall seeing an apartment that had reportedly just been vacated. From the state of the place it was impossible to believe that someone had only just moved out of there.
There’s that issue no one likes to speak about: Taxation. How keen to pay tax is the average Lagosian? Across the world, tax is a touchy topic, triggering revolutions and toppling governments. Nigeria’s oil wealth has helped to ensure that for much of its history the government has been content to ignore taxation, depending instead on the tens of billions it earns from oil exports. The problem with that sort of wealth is that the people feel no personal connection to it. The money is only theirs in a vague sense; it’s more likely to be seen as money belonging to leaders to do as they deem fit with on behalf of the state. This inspires a culture of non-accountability.
Tax money on the other hand automatically comes with a burden of accountability. It’s why in many countries around the world the term “taxpayers’ money” holds much resonance. Nigeria has created generations of citizens for whom that phrase holds little meaning.
Those attitudes are slowly changing. Today Lagos State is the only state in Nigeria that depends more on tax revenues than the oil money shared acrimoniously every month in Abuja. Take that monthly pocket money out of the equation and watch most Nigerian states collapse within a few weeks.
Apart from paying taxes and driving more sensibly and demonstrating greater levels of neighbourliness, there are several other ways in which citizens can play a role in the emerging new Lagos. I’ll give a few examples.
There’s a Lagos State Volunteers Teachers Scheme that qualified residents can participate in. It seeks to “address the shortage of teachers especially in core subject areas such as English Language, Mathematics and the Sciences.”
There’s also the Lagos State Residents Registration scheme going on. The state government says the new database will make planning easier and more accurate, and also allow the government to more efficiently deliver its services, especially the ones delivered on electronic platforms.
The Lagos scenario offers glimpses of the future. It has, as one would expect, started to inspire other states. In 2011, when Kano State Governor Rabiu Kwakwanso visited Lagos State, Governor Fashola said: “Nigeria will not prosper by what is done in the Federal Capital Territory alone but by development that takes place in each of the thirty six states using their local talents and diverse resources as models and laboratory centres for different levels of development that aggregate into the common corporate development of Nigeria.”
No doubt there’s the responsibility that city managers have to reciprocate a demonstration of civic responsibility from their residents. City managers ought to make it easier for residents to act responsibly. You can’t ask residents to report crime if you don’t provide easily accessible reporting channels. Citizens can only use pedestrian bridges if they’re available, and perceived to be safe at all hours. To encourage tax compliance taxation must not be allowed to become a burden. Stories of multiple taxation, bordering on extortion, do not encourage people to be anything other than evaders.
Clearly both sides of the divide – the leadership and the led – have responsibilities to one another. Over the years, most of the focus has been on what the state owes the people, and rightly so.
But now its time to expand the conversation, to include what the people owe the state. An engaged and responsible citizenry is a bold challenge to the state to step up. A tax-paying public is better able to hold the government to account; better able to ask tough questions.
As John F. Kennedy put it, “Ask not what your city can do for you but what you can do for your city.”
He didn’t exactly put it that way, but you get the drift.
And I would go even further to argue that it’s okay to ask what the city can do for you, especially in a clime in which people have become accustomed to doing everything for themselves.
But while asking, let’s also remember to ask ourselves, every day, “What can I do for my city? How can I take civic responsibility more seriously?
So while insisting that Lagos, like the rest of Nigeria, deserves better levels of governance, we should also acknowledge that Nigeria deserves better road users, better neighbours, better users of public property.
There’s a website where you can pledge specific steps you will take to help make Lagos a better city to live in: http://www.mylagospledge.com/
•Follow me on Twitter: @toluogunlesi
© CC BY-NC-ND 2014