Is Lagos a great city to live in?

Many years ago, Rem Koolhaas, a luminary figure in global urban architectural design, and the winner of the 2000 Pritzker Architecture Prize (basically the Nobel Prize for architecture), gave an interview with the Guardian UK, where he spoke about the work he and Kunlé Adeyemi did in Lagos in the late 90s.
 

Koolhaas mused on working in a region considered at the time to be virgin territory, remembering a place equally full of intrigue and danger. "Nigeria was blank on the map—there weren't even any maps. But Lagos at that point was not very inviting even to Lagosians. It was considered a no-go zone, almost in its entirety."

25 years later, Lagos, a self-proclaimed megacity, with an economy that would make it Africa's fifth largest, and home to anywhere between 15 and 25 million people, remains unforgivingly hostile. As the author Uzodinnma Iweala evocatively put it, the state's motto, "Centre of Excellence," is tinged with sarcasm.

Nigerians have a love-hate relationship with Lagos.

On the one hand, most Nigerians are understandably appalled by the Lagos they see from afar: the traffic, the vices, the struggle. On the other hand, over 5,000 people move to Lagos daily, lured by a promise of economic and social liberation. If feet could talk, Lagos would be the most praised city in the world.

Yet, for all its economic sophistication, social diversity, and cultural significance, Lagos has more in common with Tehran, Tripoli, and Damascus, scenes of recent armed conflicts.

Lagos is, above all, an uninhabitable city, and we have proof.

The second most unliveable city in the world

In late June, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), a sister company to the popular The Economist magazine, released its annual Global Liveability Index.

Lagos was ranked the second-worst city to live in the world, only ahead of war-torn Damascus and retaining its 2021 rank. Lagos was ranked second-bottom even as the index was expanded from 140 cities in 2021 to 173 cities in 2022. Furthermore, the rankings show that Lagos is getting worse compared to other unliveable cities.

In 2021, Damascus scored 26.5 on the index while Lagos scored 31.2, leaving a gap of 4.7. This year, Damascus scored 30.7, and Lagos scored 32.2, narrowing the gap to just 1.5. Meanwhile, the gap between Lagos and the third-worst city is widening—from 1.3 in 2021 (Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea) to 2 in 2022 (Tripoli in Libya).

Looking at the components of the liveability index paints an even bleaker picture. The EIU ranks cities across five dimensions: stability, healthcare, education, infrastructure, and culture & environment. Lagos has the joint-lowest stability score (20/100), along with Damascus and Karachi. Damascus is the capital of Syria, one of the most conflict-ridden parts of the world today. Karachi, similar to Lagos in that it was once the capital of Pakistan (now Islamabad), is known for high levels of ethnic conflict. Both Damascus and Karachi are considered active conflict zones.

Lagos, megacity, centre of excellence, is judged to be as unstable as active conflict zones.

For the other components of the index, Lagos does comparably well (for a bottom-10 city) in infrastructure, culture & environment. However, it is in social infrastructure—education and healthcare—that Lagos truly "shines".

Lagos has the lowest scores for both healthcare (tied with Harare, Zimbabwe) and education. In essence, of the 173 cities tracked by the EIU, Lagos is the worst city to live in if you are a student or someone trying to access healthcare.

Lagosians' purchasing power has eroded; now the city is too expensive

Rigorous as it may be, the EIU Global Liveability Index is just one index. Jarringly, the case for Lagos as an uninhabitable city extends beyond just the EIU index.

We can look at data from Numbeo, a crowdsourced platform that has evolved to become the largest database of living conditions across cities and countries worldwide. Although crowdsourced data is less credible than the EIU rankings, Numbeo's prominence assures a certain minimum rigour, and their data has been used by nearly every major publication in the Western world.

Numbeo provides data on multiple dimensions of living conditions in various cities, but the most interesting and in-depth is data on the cost of living. This data is particularly important here as Lagos' enduring appeal is linked to its perceived economic benefits. Whilst this may be true in comparison to other Nigerian states, it would be a hollow victory if Lagos were simply the best of Nigeria and nowhere else. Lagosians can take little pride in besting states with high poverty rates 75% (Adamawa), Ebonyi (80%), and 88% (Sokoto).

So, it is not enough for Lagosians to be better off than other Nigerians. We would at least expect them to be doing as well as people living in similar cities in the developing world.

The data suggests the opposite.

First, an explanation of the cost of living index. The Numbeo cost of living index is computed relative to the cost of living in New York City (NYC). This means that NYC has a score of 100; any score above that indicates the city is more expensive to live in than NYC, while anything below indicates the city is cheaper. So, in a way, a lower rank is "better" as it means the city is cheaper. Lagos ranks 358th out of 510 countries on the cost of living index, with a score of 39.34, showing it is much cheaper than NYC.

The bad news is that this score is misleading. It should not surprise us that Lagos is cheaper than NYC—most cities are. Basically, we should not be looking at the nominal cost of living across cities (i.e., how many dollars does it take to buy a loaf of bread). As we know, living standards heavily influence this. Therefore, we should be looking at the real cost of living.

Luckily, we can still do that here as the cost of living index includes a local purchasing power index. Purchasing power is a reliable way of measuring how far a dollar goes in each city; for example, someone earning $10,000 a month in Lagos can buy a lot more things than another person earning $10,000 in NYC. When we adjust cost of living by local purchasing power, we get a more objective measure of how expensive it is to live in each city.

The local purchasing power index is also computed relative to NYC. Again, NYC has a score of 100. Anything above that indicates that purchasing power in that city is stronger than in NYC, and anything below suggests the opposite.

When we look at the data, the results are startling.

Looking at just local purchasing power, out of 510 cities tracked, Lagosians have the third-lowest purchasing power. Lagosians are only doing better than people living in Havana (Cuba) and Damascus (again). Notably, Cuba has been suffering through its worst economic crisis for three decades, causing thousands of Cubans to flee the country. Some estimates suggest that more than 1% of Cuba's population has left the country since late last year, putting Nigeria's japa wave to shame.

When we combine cost of living and local purchasing power, Lagos' apparent low cost of living disappears because purchasing power is so weak. The table below shows cost of living and purchasing power scores for ten large African cities.
 

Remember, what matters is the cost of living relative to local purchasing power. For example, although Johannesburg has a higher cost of living than Nairobi, Johannesburg residents also have much higher purchasing power. In fact, purchasing power is twice as high as the cost of living in Johannesburg, meaning it is actually good to live in Johannesburg because you don't feel the high cost of living. You can see from the table that the gap between cost of living and purchasing power is highest in Lagos. Incredibly, cost of living is more than five times greater than purchasing power in Lagos—only Abidjan comes close.

To cap it all off, when you look at real cost of living globally (by accounting for purchasing power), Lagos has the 4th highest real cost of living across the 510 cities tracked. In simple terms, across more than 500 cities worldwide, Lagos is the 4th most expensive place to live right now.
 

The EIU says Lagos is the second least habitable city in the world. Numbeo says Lagos is the fourth most expensive place in the world. And there's more.

If you've ever wondered how bad Lagos traffic is compared to the rest of the world, Numbeo has an objective answer. Lagos tops the global traffic index in a ranking of 241 cities worldwide.

How about security? In a ranking of 453 cities, Numbeo ranks Lagos as the 45th least safe city, putting it in the top 10% of unsafe cities in the world. [Fun fact: 3 SA cities rank in the world's top 10 most dangerous cities, but the most unsafe is Caracas in Venezuela].

Finally, in Numbeo's overall quality of life index, which covers 248 countries, Lagos ranks second-bottom, ahead of only Manila in the Philippines. This time, Damascus doesn't even make list.

Lagos is only going to get worse

All this data would be more palatable if we had a strong indication that Lagos is improving. Worryingly, again, the data suggests the opposite.

We can look first at the Kearney Global Cities Index produced by one of the world's top management consulting firms (Kearney). The index is split in two. The current index ranks cities based on business activity, education, freedom of information, cultural experience and political engagement. Here, Lagos ranks 113 out of 156 cities in the 2021 edition. The second half is the Global Cities Outlook* index, which measures the potential of cities by looking at factors like social investments, inequality, economic investment, innovation and governance. Here, Lagos ranks 154th out of 156 cities—another unwanted podium finish.

As innovation is an important facet of a city's potential, we can also use the Innovation Cities Index, the oldest quantitative ranking of innovation across cities in the world. The index 500 cities, looking at over 160 indicators across 31 sectors. On this index, Lagos ranks 468th out of 500 cities. Interestingly, Port-Harcourt is also on the ranking, and is below Lagos at 489th.

Finally, we can look at the Arcadis Sustainable Cities Index, the most comprehensive quantitative analysis of how prepared cities are for the future. The index looks at three dimensions of sustainability—environmental, economic, and social, providing scores for each, as well as an aggregate score.

On the aggregate index, Lagos ranked 99th out of 100 tracked cities (podium, again), ahead of only Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of Congo), and below the likes of Manila (93rd), Nairobi (96th) and Karachi (98th).

Looking at the individual parts of the index gives an insight into where Lagos does really badly. The state fares comparably well when it comes to environmental sustainability (88th); but less so when it comes to economic sustainability (99th).

However, the fascinating dimension is social sustainability, the "people pillar" of the index. How does Arcadis evaluate cities along this pillar? According to the report, "When looking at these urban hubs through a people-centric lens, we consider the fundamental levels of crime, education, healthcare, and transport alongside key employment factors, such as income equality, and work-life balance. Connectivity is increasingly linked to the status of a modern metropolis, leading us to include the cost of broadband and Wi-Fi availability as important indicators of a sustainable and prospering city." In essence, the social pillar looks at the suitability of each city for allowing residents to thrive and prosper in the long run.

How does Lagos fare? It ranks dead last.  

There you have it. Lagos manages a negative podium finish in almost all available rankings of global cities (table below). By any metric, along every dimension, Lagos is an uninhabitable city.