Thursday, February 01, 2007

Lagos the Mega City

Virginia wrote a post a few days ago in which she shared this interesting nugget of truth.
By 2010, London will fall off the Top 30 Biggest Cities in the World list. Soon after that will be New York, Osaka and Paris. They will be considered smaller cities. Cities that will replace them on the list include Lahore, Lagos, Dhaka and Hyderabad. Ever heard of them? Me neither.(Then again, I am an American, and am globally unaware!) Why are the familiar cities falling off the list, and so soon? Because Asia's (and especially China's) population is staggeringly out of control. Here's the kicker: If current trends continue, by 2050, the top 10 largest cities in the world will all be in China. EIGHT of them haven't even been built yet.
LAGOS y'all! Did you see Lagos on that list? Well act like you know it's the most populated city in Nigeria and that's where my parents currently live and have lived for over a decade.

Do you know how many Nigerians live in Lagos? Consider this, there are approximately 131,859,731 million Nigerians in the country. And probably about another 30 million in the diaspora. All of them...every single one of them have a relative that lives in Lagos, have lived in Lagos themselves or will live in Lagos give +/- 5 years. That's how huge Lagos is. It's so big that not only the city Lagos is huge---the state Lagos is also full to capacity.

So it's going to be a MEGA CITY...if it's not already, lol.

2 comments:

KemiMamaLopes said...

My name is Kemi and I love Lagos :) There, I've said it. I lived in Ibadan for the first 19 years of my life and moved to London. Never spent more than one night in Lagos until I went in December. Lovely, lovely, lovely.

Virginia Belle said...

that is so cool!!!! i love learning about all this stuff. i realize i'm just a stupid american, but thank you for telling me more about lagos. i had no idea. very cool!!!!

totally incredible how fast the world is changing.

have your parents commented on any noticable population changes there? what do they think about the population boom in Nigeria?