Sustainable Urban Growth in Africa: Lessons from Lagos's Pentecostal Community

Abstract

Over the past decade and a half, the Nigerian city of Lagos has been a source of fascination for urban thinkers interested in the way its unrelenting growth in population and size seemed to defy the established conventions of urban development. More recently, the city has attracted external attention for the ways in which the current political administration has developed innovative solutions to seemingly intractable urban problems and sought to counteract the effects of decades of neglect on infrastructure. Yet, the difficult urban conditions that first drew the attention of external observers are still very present. Furthermore, because the solutions introduced by the government rely on a neo-liberal logic, existing social inequities are maintained or exacerbated by these solutions. We can think here of the introduction of the Eko Atlantic land reclamation project which has, in effect, exchanged a public space – the Lagos Bar Beach—for an exclusive real estate development (marketed as “The Best Prime Real Estate in Nigeria”). We can also think of the ways in which private development has focused on the Lagos Island-Lekki axis at the expense of a more equitable distribution of capital and services throughout the city. Alongside the expansion of the city and the latest efforts of political administrations, Pentecostal groups have constructed vast, independently-operated campuses on the periphery of the city that offer an alternative to the goings in Lagos's urban limits. In this paper, I interrogate the ideologies behind the construction of these religious sites. In particular, I will be examining the sites constructed by two groups: the Redeemed Christian Church of God and Living Faith Church Worldwide and inquiring whether the approach taking by these organizations provides city planners with new ways of thinking about the city. The two groups in question subscribe to a Pentecostal Christian ideology that believes in the physical manifestation of the divine. The explosive growth that this form of Christianity experienced in Lagos starting in the 1990s allowed these groups to accumulate immense human and financial capital. As a result, they are able to provide infrastructure and services that serve as alternatives to those provide by the government and most clearly visible in the vast campuses they have constructed on the outskirts of the city. In the presentation ahead, I will explain whether these groups' approach should be considered as an alternative to the model of urban development provided by the government and whether there are lessons to be learned by Lagos's city planners.