By Olukorede Yishau
FOR LAGOSIANS or Nigerians, or anyone remotely familiar with Lagos, it is difficult to read Pemi Aguda’s debut novel, ‘One Leg on Earth’, and not think of the Eko Atlantic city, that new and humongous settlement emerging out of what we used to call Bar Beach. Not for once did the remarkable writer mention the Eko Atlantic city on the pages of the novel, but the imageries of the city are ingrained almost everywhere!
Aguda calls the city in which Yosoye, the protagonist of the book, is serving her fatherland Omi City, a clever rechristening of Lagos’ city of promise, the city which in a matter of years will host the United States’ biggest consulate in the world on 12.2-acre of land.
Like the Eko Atlantic city, Aguda’s Omi City is emerging from the once-upon-a-time Bar Beach. Almost everything about this city is similar to its real-life kin, the one that when finished will rival the best of real estates not just in Africa but in the world with an ambience comparable to Seventh Arrondissement in Paris, La Jolla in San Diego and Tokyo’s Shibuya and Roppongi.
But, unlike Eko Atlantic city, there is something else about Omi City, something sinister, something absolutely crazy, something Eko Atlantic city and Lagos should never experience.
The larger Lagos refuses the backseat in this novel. We see Lagos where news breaks at the speed of sound: Before you properly digest one, another is upon you. We see suicides but of a different kind.
We see that Lagos evokes the memory of the mythic Esu with two-sided face of different hues as though intent on causing confusion— leaving a resident or a visitor to choose what to believe about this city of promise.
We see its off-putting rustic quarters, its contemporary mansions, its loudness and its serenity and its pungent poverty and its sweet-smelling affluence.
We see that Lagos is like a lion: it rumbles, it roars, and on its streets, iron jangles against iron.
We see that many a part of Lagos is so alive that shutting the windows, slamming the doors and more are not enough to drive away noise pollution. If an ambulance is not disturbing your peace, a bus conductor shouting himself hoarse is; if the muezzin’s annoyingly loud call to prayer is not the source of headache, the disgusting cacophony from a vigil or mid-week service in a nearby church is. At times the challenge is street brawls.
We see that Lagos has grown irrepressibly and keeps on bloating, careless of having gorged more than its digestive system could process. Every hour it receives new visitors to swell its bloated tummy, which makes it look like a candidate for constipation and making it look like heaven and hell, side by side: for every Apapa GRA, there is an Ajegunle; for every Ajah, there is Agungi; for every Ikoyi, there is an Obalende; for every posh side of Ikeja, there is an Ipodo; and for every Lekki, there are shanties here and there.
We see a city with no sense of time, where almost nothing starts on schedule. Even when you want to be different, traffic can mess things up. So productive is the gridlock that anything can happen while in it.
The novel is a creative critique of the Eko Atlantic city. Once upon a time, along what we used to call Bar Beach and its surrounding areas, hundreds of people lived, worked, traded, and fished by the ocean. Their homes were modest, often vulnerable to the harsh moods of the sea, but they were homes, nonetheless.
Soon, these communities found themselves in the path of one of Africa’s most ambitious urban development projects and, in 2008, residents of the Bar Beach settlements were evicted as preparations for the massive land reclamation scheme began.
Human rights advocates, researchers, and former residents still recount stories of homes demolished, families displaced, and livelihoods disrupted. For these people, the birth of Eko Atlantic was not simply the creation of a new city but the end of a familiar world.
Avoiding the danger of a single story requires getting the other side, the side of the Lagos State government and the project’s developers. Till this day, they maintain that the reclamation was necessary to save Victoria Island and adjoining areas from the relentless advance of coastal erosion.
Truth be told: For decades, the Atlantic Ocean steadily ate away at the shoreline, claiming land and threatening property.
It used to be so bad on that axis, so bad that several properties adjacent the Bar Beach were abandoned. But the construction of the massive sea wall, popularly known as the Great Wall of Lagos, offered both a protective shield and the foundation for a new city. Yet questions linger about insufficient attention to the people who bore the immediate cost of that transformation.
Aguda, in this novel, captures both sides of the divide and shows brilliantly that the project, though an engineering marvel, is equally a reminder that every grand urban project carries human consequences and raises the poser: when cities are built, how do we ensure that the people who stood there first are not forgotten?
Lest I forget, though Lagos is a major character in the novel, the main character is Yosoye, who while trying to find a new life in Lagos, becomes pregnant and decides to keep it despite the unpleasant circumstances surrounding it, a situation that mimics her own birth, some sort of history repeating itself.
Her pregnancy comes at a time Lagos and, by extension Omi City, is experiencing something otherworldly: Suicide by expectant mothers; they are simply walking or jumping into bodies of water, leaving families and friends confused, leaving authorities and the general public wondering, wondering about what is going on. The situation imposes an assorted of nightmares on Yosoye, who is also pregnant, but not even the plea of her mother, Olabisi, is enough to make her abandon Omi City and Lagos for Ibadan, the city she sees as so infinitesimal to accommodate her gigantic dreams.
The author, in resolving the conflicts, uses water as a key metaphor in this work, which reinforces the image of Lagos as a carnivorous city. She makes it clear that water was before land so water is life and it can be redemptive.
My final take: Aguda’s prose is adorned, it is elaborate, it is maximalist, and it is beautiful.
Quote
Every grand urban project carries human consequences and raises the poser: when cities are built, how do we ensure that the people who stood there first are not forgotten?
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