There was a time when a Lagos Island address was more than an address. If you told a Lagosian that you lived at Number 14, XYZ Street, you were not merely giving directions. You were announcing a piece of family history. You could tell him who built the house, when the family came there, who your grandfather was, where your father was born and perhaps even which room belonged to which ancestor. The house had a name. The street had a memory. The address carried a genealogy.
Today, the address may still exist, but the house may have disappeared. “Ilé Baba Olaiya” may have become an apartment block, a shopping complex or an office building whose architecture bears little relationship to the house that once stood there. The number remains. The street remains. But something has gone missing. The address has survived. The memory has not.
That is why the debate about the transformation of Lagos Island deserves to go beyond the familiar language of “development.” What is happening is not merely about new buildings replacing old buildings. It is about property, economics, architecture, social change, culture and history—and, ultimately, about who gets to remain part of the city being rebuilt.
This is where the uncomfortable word gentrification enters the conversation.
Gentrification is generally understood as the process by which wealthier people and businesses move into poorer or working-class neighbourhoods, invest in property and infrastructure, and cause property values, rents and living costs to rise, sometimes displacing the people who have lived there for generations. But Lagos Island does not fit the textbook perfectly. Many indigenous Lagos families are neither poor nor traditionally working-class. Displacement may not come through a rent increase or a tax bill. It can come through the sale of ancestral property, the pressure of redevelopment, fragmented inheritance, the inability to finance modern construction or simply the enormous financial temptation placed before an owner who cannot afford to redevelop. The transaction may be voluntary. The pressure behind it may not be.
Walk from Obalende through Igbosere, Bamgbose, Tinubu and Idumota and the transformation is impossible to miss. An old bungalow becomes a piece of land. A developer arrives. The owner is offered what appears to be a substantial sum. The bungalow disappears. A multi-storey structure rises. The family moves elsewhere. The developer changes. The tenants change. The architecture changes. The social character changes. And gradually, the memory changes too. This is how a people can be displaced without a bulldozer ever being driven through their living room. Sometimes the eviction notice is not a piece of paper. Sometimes it is simply the price of staying.
The same story can relate to the markets. Idumota, Docemo Street, Jankara, Bombata, Pelewura, Itafaji, Tinubu and Balogun are not merely commercial spaces. They are economic history written in human beings. Generations have traded there. Names have passed from father to son. Shops, stalls, relationships and reputations have been inherited.
New structures may be bigger, taller, cleaner and commercially more sophisticated. But a legitimate question remains: can the Lagosians who created the commercial life of these places still afford to operate in them?
A family business can disappear without anyone announcing its death. A shop that a family has occupied and operated for generations may be sold or redeveloped when the property becomes too valuable to remain in the hands of the family. The descendants who once traded there may return as tenants—or leave altogether—because they can no longer afford the rent or the cost of doing business in the very place their ancestors helped to build. The irony is painful: the property has become more valuable, but the family that created and preserved that value has become unable to afford it. That is a peculiar kind of development—when the people whose presence gave a place its commercial life are gradually priced out of the prosperity that grows around them.
Then there is the environment itself. From Isale Eko through Obalende, Igbosere, Bamgbose, Tinubu and Idumota, and from Adeniji Adele Crescent through Olowogbowo towards Marina, the pressure of development is everywhere. Waste is humongous. Inner roads are increasingly obstructed. Building materials appear where roads should breathe. Traffic, sanitation, accommodation and urban infrastructure are under enormous pressure. The Island is becoming physically fuller while becoming historically emptier. That paradox deserves our attention.
For Lagos Island is not merely an enormous piece of land waiting to be converted into its highest commercial value. It is an archive. Its streets are pages. Its family houses are chapters. Its shrines are repositories of memory. Its markets are living institutions. Its landmarks are historical witnesses.
And its names are footnotes to the story of Lagos.
The people themselves are part of the evidence.b Once those people disappear, the archive begins to lose its meaning.
Consider the landmarks.
The Lagos High Court building on Igbosere was lost during the destruction that followed the 2020 #EndSARS upheaval. Its reconstruction is now underway, and one can only hope that what returns will not merely be a functional building but something that respects the memory and character of the place.
The NET Building, once celebrated as the tallest building in West Africa, is now a shadow of the architectural statement it once represented. Fernandez Tower on Beckley Street stands desolate, apparently awaiting whatever fate the bulldozer may eventually deliver. Ile Andrew by Odunfa Street is gone.
And what remains of the historical Epetedo where MKO Abiola made his famous declaration? Does the physical environment still help us remember the significance of what happened there, or has the place itself been swallowed by buildings, congestion and the relentless appetite of urban development?
These are not merely questions about old buildings.
They are questions about whether a city can remember itself after destroying the physical witnesses through which it once told its story.
Take Andrew House—known locally as Petesi Anduru, but formally Ebun House—at 85 Odunfa Street. Built in 1913 by Andrew Williams Upton Thomas, the wealthy Lagos merchant and auctioneer and father of Bode Thomas, it belonged to an era when Lagos was being reshaped by the return of Afro-Brazilian and Aguda communities and by the commercial confidence of a growing city. Its arches, ornamental plasterwork and imposing three-storey form expressed a particular Lagos architectural tradition and a particular moment in the city’s history.bFire damaged it. It was rebuilt without preserving the history embodied in the original structure. Today, another block of flats occupies the space on Odunfa Street. The name may survive. But names alone cannot carry an entire civilisation.
Then there is Casa do Fernandez. At the corner near Tinubu Square, Casa do Fernandez—also known as Ilojo Bar and Olaiya House—was much more than an old building. Its Afro-Brazilian architecture was part of the visual language of an important chapter in Lagos history. The nineteenth-century transformation of Lagos was shaped not only by colonial expansion and trade but also by Africans of the diaspora who returned from Brazil and brought with them building techniques, craftsmanship and ideas of urban design. The arches, decorative plasterwork and balanced proportions of Casa do Fernandez belonged to that history.
And its location mattered.
Tinubu Square itself is part of the story of Lagos trade, public life and governance, and carries the name of Madam Tinubu, one of the influential figures of nineteenth-century Lagos. Casa do Fernandez therefore did not merely stand in Lagos.
It stood within the Lagos story. Declared a National Monument in 1956, it became familiar to generations of Lagosians as Ilojo Bar and Olaiya House, carrying with it another layer of popular memory through its association with Victor Olaiya and the golden age of highlife. People knew where it was. They used it as a reference point.
They passed it on their way to somewhere else. They did not need a historian to tell them that it mattered.
Then, on 10 September 2016, it was demolished.
The reaction from historians, architects, cultural advocates and members of the public was widespread. Yet the larger question remains almost absurd in its simplicity:bHow does a national monument disappear from a historic Lagos space?
Today, Casa do Fernandez survives in photographs, archives and memory. But when a historic building disappears, something more than bricks and mortar disappears with it. A layer of the city’s memory disappears. Lagos becomes physically newer and historically poorer. Its absence is now itself part of the story Lagos tells about Lagos.
The same concern arises when we look at the National Museum at Onikan. The institution that ought to be one of the natural custodians of our collective memory can sometimes appear strangely desolate, reduced in the public imagination to little more than an inexpensive venue for social occasions.
That should trouble us. A museum is supposed to be where a people encounter themselves. The National Museum should not look like a place waiting for history to come and rescue it.
But Lagos State Government has also shown that another path is possible.
The old Randle Centre at Onikan has been resuscitated and transformed into the J. Randle Centre for Yorùbá Culture and History. The philosophy is different: history is not simply locked behind glass and left to gather dust. It is presented within a contemporary cultural environment capable of attracting living people.
The Freedom Park offers an even more striking lesson. The site was formerly Her Majesty’s Broad Street Prison, established in 1882. What was once a place of colonial confinement has been transformed into a place of freedom, creativity, contemplation, entertainment and public interaction. Conceived by architect Theo Lawson and developed with the Lagos State Government under Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola, Freedom Park opened in October 2010 as part of the celebration of Nigeria’s 50th independence anniversary. Its symbolism is difficult to miss. A prison became a park. A place of restraint became a place of freedom. A site of sorrow became a place of memory, art, music, performance, recreation and social interaction. The place that once imprisoned people became a place where people come to feel free.
That is what intelligent preservation can do. It does not freeze history. It reinterprets it. The urban renewal undertaken in Isale Gangan under Governor Fashola, particularly the use of land-pooling, also deserves serious study. It demonstrated that redevelopment need not necessarily treat existing communities as obstacles to be cleared away. Existing stakeholders can be part of the redevelopment equation.
The lesson is simple enough: Preservation and development do not have to be enemies. The real question is what kind of development we choose.
Because the Lagos Island story is not a perfect textbook case of gentrification. Indigenous families are not uniformly poor. Some displacement is not imposed by government or landlords. Some properties are sold willingly. Some owners simply decide that the offer on the table is too attractive to refuse. But the cumulative effect matters.
Families whose ancestors lived on Lagos Island for generations have moved to Surulere, Yaba, Festac, Ajah, Ikorodu and beyond. Their descendants may retain the family name, the family history and perhaps even the title documents.bBut one day, they may find themselves visiting the place where their ancestors lived as outsiders. That would be a most peculiar definition of development.
I was reminded of this during the last Eyo festival.
Eyo is not simply a colourful tourist carnival. It is deeply connected to the history, traditions and identity of Lagos Island. Yet I encountered friends whose families are indigenous to Lagos Island who had to book hotel accommodation in order to come “home” for Eyo.
Think about that.
A man whose ancestors lived on the Island now needs a hotel room to participate in a festival rooted in the very community from which his family came. He may carry the surname. He may know the genealogy. He may know the ancestral house. He may know the history. But the city has become sufficiently inaccessible to him that he needs paid accommodation to visit home.
If that does not make us pause, what will?
And there is another, quieter form of disappearance. Some traditional shrines on Lagos Island are gradually being surrounded and overshadowed by brick and mortar. Tall modern buildings tower above places whose significance may be known only to custodians and families. Imagine a stranger living several floors above one of these sacred places, looking directly down upon ceremonies whose meaning he does not understand. Perhaps he photographs them casually. Perhaps he never asks what they mean. The shrine may still physically exist.
But the environment that gave it meaning is disappearing.vAnd that is an important distinction:
Survival is not the same as preservation.
We should therefore resist the false choice between a decaying old Lagos and a modern Lagos. Of course Lagos Island must develop. Some old houses are unsafe. Some streets require drainage, sanitation, parking, fire protection, waste management and modern infrastructure. Some buildings will inevitably have to be demolished and rebuilt. Nobody should confuse preservation with decay. The question is not whether Lagos Island should modernise. The question is whether it can modernise without dispossessing the people whose history made the Island what it is. Why should every family sell independently to the developer offering the biggest cheque? Why should an elderly landowner sell ancestral property simply because he cannot personally finance redevelopment? Why should an entire family compound disappear because its descendants cannot raise the capital required to rebuild it?
Families can pool their properties and participate collectively in redevelopment. Architects, surveyors, lawyers, town planners, financiers and historians can work with landowners to create professionally managed development projects. A proper heritage inventory can identify family compounds, historic buildings, significant streets, landmarks and sacred sites before they disappear. Modern housing can be created while units or equity are retained for the original families. An elderly landowner should be able to contribute land as equity rather than sell it outright. The landowner should become an investor in the future of Lagos Island—not an expropriated spectator watching somebody else build wealth on the land his ancestors preserved.
A family should not have to sell the goose merely because somebody else wants the eggs. Let the developers come. Let the architects come. Let the financiers come. Let the high-rises come. Let Lagos Island become cleaner, safer, greener and economically productive. But let “Baba Olaiya’s” family remain part of the story. Let descendants still have a place on the Island. Let “Number 14” remain more than an address. Let the new building carry the old family name. Let the original family share in the wealth created from the redevelopment of its ancestral property. Let the street retain its memory. Let the shrine retain its dignity. Let the landmark survive where it can—and where it cannot, let its history be deliberately preserved.
The National Museum must live again.
The J. Randle Centre has shown that culture can be contemporary without becoming rootless.
Freedom Park has shown that even the ruins of oppression can be transformed into spaces of memory and creativity.
Lagos Island needs more such oases.
The challenge, therefore, is not merely to the Lagos State Government. It is also to the Lagos Island elite. Those who inherited Lagos Island must wake up to the responsibility that comes with inheritance.
We should stop spending all our energy arguing over who was born in Irabiji, Ikirun or somewhere else, while the inheritance itself is disappearing beneath our feet. The urgent question is not simply who inherited Lagos Island?
It is: What are we going to do with the inheritance?
The answer must begin with organisation. Bring the families together. Map the ancestral properties.
Document the families. Identify the heritage buildings. Protect the shrines. Preserve the landmarks. Pool the land. Mobilise capital. Bring in competent planners and architects. Develop models that allow indigenous owners to retain meaningful ownership in the redevelopment of their properties.
Because if the owners do nothing, somebody else will eventually do something with their land. And when the work is finished, they may return to admire the magnificent new development and discover that their ancestral house is still standing in the title documents—but they no longer live there.
That is the ultimate absurdity of gentrification. A people can lose their city without losing their title deeds. They can retain the address and lose the home. They can preserve the name of the street and lose the story behind it. One day, you may show your children the photographs of your ancestral home on Lagos Island. You may take them to the street, point to the address and tell them, “This is where your grandfather lived. This is where your parents lived. This is where you were born.” But their feet will never touch the soil of that ancestral home. The room where you were born will no longer exist. The compound where your family lived, celebrated, mourned and raised generations will have disappeared. Instead, you will point to a nondescript apartment block and tell them that this is where their family once lived.
And that is the tragedy. To the young minds of your children, the place will soon become just another building, another address, another piece of Lagos with no personal meaning. The memory will fade because the physical connection to it has been broken. You have not merely lost a house. You have lost your heritage. And when a generation can show its children photographs of where their ancestors lived, but can no longer take them there, something far more precious than property has already been lost. They have inherited the memory, but lost the heritage and spirituality that gave that memory its meaning.
PABIEKUN WORLDVIEW
The Week in Perspective — News, Views & the Things We Pretend Not to See
©️ Otunba Abiodun Olufowobi (PABIEKUN). No repost, reproduction or republication without attribution/permission.
END
Be the first to comment