Struggles of a megacity

Lagos’ governor Babtunde Fashola is trying to turn the tumultuous city into a glitzy business hub, and his success will rest on initiatives like this light rail line - a $2.5 billion project that has been underway for three years.

But construction has involved massive and controversial slum clearance, and is behind schedule because there is barely a stretch of land on which someone isn't living or trading.

Thousands of illegal settlements erected by slum dwellers have been destroyed this year. No one has been compensated, because they were never supposed to be there to begin with.

Travel is a huge problem in Lagos, which has seen massive population growth and draws an estimated 4,000 economic migrants each day.

The transport authority says there are 9 million road trips per day in the city, where trademark yellow buses overtake, undertake and force their way down impossibly narrow side streets. Some residents get up at 4.30 a.m. to make the office by nine.

Yet things are improving; highways were widened and police stationed at bottlenecks. New ferry services now beat traffic by crossing the lagoon in a state one fifth of which is water.

As the city grows, it still struggles with housing for its residents, who include some 100,000 people living here in the Makoko slum, in houses on stilts with no sanitation.

There is no shortage of development projects for the rich. Moss-dusted colonial-era houses in the city’s leafy Ikoyi district are becoming rare as they get torn down and swapped for luxury flats.

But critics accuse governor Fashola of fixing the city for besuited business types, yet being slow on things like low-cost housing to help those sleeping under bridges or on rubbish tips.

Fashola himself resents the notion he has neglected the poor. He points to projects like massive mains water provision, which will when finished provide 10-20 litres a day to Lagosians, even if the city swells to 35 million, he says.