Who belongs in a city? | OluTimehin Adegbeye

Cities are like siblings in a large polygamous family.

Each one has a unique personality and is headed in a distinct direction.

But they all have somewhat shared origins.

Sometimes I think postcolonial cities are like the children

of the two least-favorite wives,

who are constantly being asked,

"Ah, why can't you be more like your sister?"

(Laughter)

The "why" of cities is largely the same, no matter where they are:

an advantageous location that makes trade and administration possible;

the potential for scalable opportunities

for the skilled and unskilled alike;

a popular willingness to be in constant flux

and, of course, resilience.

The "how" of cities, however, is a whole other story.

How are they run?

How do they grow?

How do they decide who belongs and who doesn't?

Lagos is my home.

You can always find the Nigerians

by following the noise and the dancing, right?

(Laughter)

Like any major city, that place is a lot of things,

many of which are highly contradictory.

Our public transportation doesn't quite work,

so we have these privately owned bright yellow buses

that regularly cause accidents.

Luxury car showrooms line badly maintained and often flooded roads.

Street evangelism is only slightly less ubiquitous

than street harassment.

Sex workers sometimes have two degrees, a bank job

and a prominent role in church.

(Laughter)

On any given day,

there can be either a party or a burned body

in the middle of a street.

There is so much that is possible in Lagos

and so much that isn't,

and very often the difference between possibility and impossibility

is simply who you are,

and if you're lucky enough, who you're connected to.

Belonging in Lagos is a fluid concept

determined by ethnic origin, sexual orientation, gender,

but most visibly and often most violently,

class.

Before Nigeria became a country,

fisherpeople from the inland creeks started to come down the Lagos lagoon

and establish villages along the coast.

About 60 years later, my grandfather, Oludotun Adekunle Kukoyi,

also arrived in Lagos.

Like me, he was an alumnus of the University of Ibadan,

a young member of the educated elite in the independence era.

Over time, he built an illustrious career as a land surveyor,

mapping out now-bustling neighborhoods

when they were just waist-high wild grass.

He died when I was nine.

And by that time, my family, like the families of those fisherpeople,

knew Lagos as home.

Among the Yoruba, we have a saying,

"Èkó gb’olè, ó gb’ọ̀lẹ,"

which can be translated to mean that Lagos will welcome anyone.

But that saying is becoming less and less true.

Many Lagosians, including the descendants of those fisherpeople

who arrived generations before my grandfather,

are now being pushed out

to make room for an emergent city

that has been described as "the new Dubai."

You see, Lagos inspires big dreams, even in its leaders,

and successive governments have declared aspirations

towards a megacity where poverty does not exist.

Unfortunately, instead of focusing on the eradication of poverty

as you would expect,

the strategy of choice focuses on eliminating the poor.

Last October, the Governor announced plans

to demolish every single waterfront settlement in Lagos.

There are more than 40 of these indigenous communities

all over the city,

with over 300,000 people living in them.

Otodo Gbame,

a hundred-year-old fishing village

with a population about three-quarters that of Monaco

and similar potential for beachfront luxury --

(Laughter)

was one of the first to be targeted.

I first heard of Otodo Gbame after the demolition started.

When I visited in November 2016, I met Magdalene Aiyefoju.

She is a now-homeless woman

whose surname means, "the world is blind."

Magdalene's son Basil was one of over 20 people

who were shot, drowned

or presumed dead in that land grab.

Standing outside her shelter, I saw the two white-sand football fields

where Basil used to play.

Spread all around us were the ruins of schools, churches,

a primary health center, shops,

thousands of homes.

Young children enthusiastically helped to put up shelters,

and about 5,000 of the residents, with nowhere else to go,

simply stayed put.

And then in April,

state security personnel came back.

This time, they cleared the community out completely,

with beatings, bullets and fire.

As I speak, there are construction crews preparing Otodo Gbame's beaches

for anyone who can afford a multi-million-dollar view.

The new development is called "Periwinkle Estate."

Forced evictions are incredibly violent and, of course, unconstitutional.

And yet, they happen so often in so many of our cities,

because the first thing we are taught to forget about poor people

is that they are people.

We believe that a home is a thing a person absolutely has a right to,

unless the person is poor and the home is built a certain way

in a certain neighborhood.

But there is no single definition of the word "home."

After all, what is a slum besides an organic response

to acute housing deficits and income inequality?

And what is a shanty if not a person making a home for themselves

against all odds?

Slums are an imperfect housing solution,

but they are also prime examples of the innovation, adaptability

and resilience at the foundation --

and the heart --

of every functional city.

You don't need to be the new Dubai

when you're already Lagos.

(Applause)

We have our own identity,

our own rhythm,

and as anyone who knows Lagos can tell you,

poor Lagosians are very often the source of the city's character.

Without its poor, Lagos would not be known for its music

or its endless energy

or even the fact that you can buy an ice cold drink or a puppy

through your car window.

(Laughter)

The conditions that cause us to define certain neighborhoods as slums

can be effectively improved,

but not without recognizing the humanity and the agency

of the people living in them.

In Lagos, where public goods are rarely publicly available,

slum dwellers are often at the forefront of innovating solutions.

After being disconnected from the grid for months

because the power company couldn't figure out how to collect bills,

one settlement designed a system that collectivized remittances

and got everyone cheaper rates into the bargain.

Another settlement created a reform program

that hires local bad boys as security.

They know every trick and every hideout,

so now troublemakers are more likely to get caught and reported to police

and fewer of the youth end up engaging in criminal activity.

Yet another settlement recently completed

a flood-safe, eco-friendly communal toilet system.

Models like these are being adopted across Lagos.

Informal settlements are incorrectly named as the problem.

In fact, the real problems are the factors that create them,

like the entrenchment of poverty,

social exclusion

and state failures.

When our governments frame slums as threats

in order to justify violent land grabs or forced evictions,

they're counting on those of us who live in formal housing

to tacitly and ignorantly agree with them.

Rather, we must remind them

that governments exist to serve not only those who build

and live in luxury homes,

but also those who clean and guard them.

Our --

(Applause)

our realities may differ,

but our rights don't.

The Lagos state government,

like far too many on our continent,

pays lip service to ideas of inclusion,

while acting as though progress can only be achieved

by the erasure, exploitation and even elimination of groups

it considers expendable.

People living with disabilities who hawk or beg on Lagos streets

are rounded up, extorted

and detained.

Women in low-income neighborhoods are picked up

and charged with prostitution,

regardless of what they actually do for a living.

Gay citizens are scapegoated to distract from real political problems.

But people, like cities, are resilient,

and no amount of legislation or intimidation or violence

can fully eliminate any of us.

Prostitutes, women and women who work as prostitutes

still haven't gone extinct,

despite centuries of active suppression.

Queer Africans continue to exist,

even though queerness is now criminalized in most parts of the continent.

And I'm fairly certain that poor people don't generally tend to just disappear

because they've been stripped of everything they have.

We are all already here,

and that answers the question

of whether or not we belong.

When those fisherpeople started to sail down the lagoon

in search of new homes,

it could not have occurred to them

that the city that would rise up around them

would one day insist that they do not belong in it.

I like to believe that my grandfather,

in mapping new frontiers for Lagos,

was trying to open it up

to make room for other people to be welcomed by the city

in the same way that he was.

On my way here, my grandma called me

to remind me how proud she was,

how proud [my grandfather] and my mother would have been.

I am their dreams come true.

But there is no reason why their dreams -- or mine, for that matter --

are allowed to come true

while those of others are turned to nightmares.

And lest we forget:

the minimum requirement for a dream

is a safe place to lay your head.

It is too late now for Basil,

but not for Magdalene,

not for the hundreds of thousands,

the millions still under threat in Lagos

or any of our cities.

The world does not have to remain blind

to the suffering that is created when we deny people's humanity,

or even to the incredible potential for growth that exists

when we recognize and value all contributions.

We must hold our governments

and ourselves

accountable

for keeping our shared cities safe for everyone in them,

because the only cities worth building --

indeed, the only futures worth dreaming of --

are those that include all of us,

no matter who we are

or how we make homes for ourselves.

Thank you.

(Applause)