Lagos: City report

Working Paper 32

Taibat Lawanson, Lindsay Sawyer and Damilola Olalekan

September 2025

Abstract

This paper applies the African Cities Research Consortium’s (ACRC’s) holistic analytical framework, comprising of politics, systems and development domains, to explore the complex dynamics of contested political systems and the impact of the rapid urbanisation of Lagos, Nigeria. The study applies this framework by, firstly, examining Lagos’s place within the national “broad dispersed” political settlement. Lagos is found to have a “narrow concentrated” political settlement at the city level that significantly influences development and the prospects of developmental reform. Federal–city relations and frictions are found to be a key dynamic shaping urban development. A broad and nuanced approach to the political economy of Lagos’s urban systems demonstrates profound inadequacy in the coverage, access and quality of various systems, including transportation, water and sanitation, energy and waste management. The systems analysis gives the historical, political and governance context that shape the systems, and explores the risks and vulnerabilities that the city of systems produces. Inadequacies in energy provision, in particular, are shown to undermine the structural transformation of Lagos. ACRC’s Lagos research has focused on four domains: safety and security; housing; structural transformation; and neighbourhood and district economic development. The report summarises the key issues and actors for each domain and explores how they are shaped by the political settlement and how they interact with the city of systems. The report also explores the crosscutting issues of climate change, gender and finance. The report and analytical framework identify many avenues for future research and action, highlight some of the most pertinent issues to arise, and make recommendations that emerge from the research.

Keywords

Lagos, Nigeria, urbanism, informality, infrastructure, governance, reforms