Overcrowding and disease epidemics in colonial Lagos: rethinking road and railway infrastructure

Abstract

The transformation of Lagos from an essentially rural and swampy terrain to a modern metropolis was undoubtedly a function of the British modernisation drive. However, the patterns and methods of the “modernisation drive” raise a fundamental question: to ask “modernisation for whom”? The colonialists, natives or immigrants? This paper, therefore, examines the desires, design and implementation of the British infrastructure; concentrating on the impact of the emergent road and railway infrastructure on the livelihood of the citizenry. The paper argues that road and railway infrastructure facilitated the uncontrolled influx of immigrants to Lagos, which invariably overstretched the existing housing and sewage system. Thus, it degenerated to overcrowding and disease epidemics as epitomised by the outbreak of tuberculosis and bubonic plague in 1919 and between 1924 and 1930 respectively. The paper, therefore, concludes that with the available evidence at our disposal, it is obvious that the road and railway were constructed to enhance the unequal exchange between the metropolis and the satellites. This, of course, partly explains the haphazard ways and manners it was carried out without proper consideration for housing and accommodation.