NIGERIA BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Standard 12

Human Settlements

Nigeria’s settlement geography is undergoing rapid change. As late as 1950, Nigeria’s urban population was as little as fifteen percent of the country’s total. Today, Nigeria’s urban population accounts for as much as 40 percent of the total population. Before devoting more attention to Nigeria’s complex urban geography, however, a few words should be said about the country’s rural settlements. Even with rapid urbanization, these are the settlements where the majority of Nigerians still live.

Rural Settlements

While it is difficult to summarize the varied rural settlement patterns of a country as large as Nigeria, a few key points can be made. First, the household is the main social unit of the rural village or town. This is etched in the landscape through the formation of compounds. Compounds are typically composed of three to ten buildings and often have an earthen wall that marks off the collective space of a single compound. Compounds range in size based on the size of the household unit. This is determined by the number of children and extended family residing in the compound and by the number of wives that a man has. Polygyny is much more common in the North where most men are allowed by Muslim law to have as many as four wives. Hence, in households where polygyny is practiced, each wife will typically have her own hut within the compound.

In terms of building materials, building walls are composed of earthen bricks in much of the country, while roofs are constructed with thatch or corrugated metal. Corrugated metal is much more common in southern Nigeria and generally represents greater social status. Since thatch must typically be replaced every one to two years, metal is much easier to maintain.

Another important point to note about rural villages is that they serve commercial functions. Depending on the size of the settlement, most rural towns and villages have markets that serve as a place of exchange for the settlement and its surrounding trade area. The size of the market is also typically related to the frequency with which it meets. The smallest rural markets in Nigeria may only meet once every two weeks, while the largest meet daily. In the market one can find all kinds of daily and specialized goods for sale: meats, grains, oils, nuts, and fruits. Most towns also serve as service centers. Here one is likely to find a health clinic, a "barbing salon" (i.e. hair stylists), a car mechanic, or a police station.

Another area of major importance to rural settlements is infrastructure. This includes transportation, communications, and utilities infrastructure. While there is some variance in rural communities’ access to these types of collective infrastructure, most rural areas lag behind cities in the development of these services. It is not uncommon, for example, to see a rural village with electric lines passing through it. But that it is literally all the lines do. There are often no connections to the rural town. The lines are merely carrying power from a generating plant or a hydroelectric facility to urban areas. While the lines are physically proximate to the villagers, they are economically distant from their day-to-day lives. Another example of rural-urban disparities is transportation infrastructure. Many rural settlements are poorly connected to their surrounding region. This is the case for at least two reasons. First, construction and upkeep of roads has not been sufficient to afford all rural peoples easy access to an efficient, well-maintained highway network. Second, many rural people have limited access to motor vehicles. While taxis are abundant in the cities, those without cars in the countryside are severely constrained. In northern Nigeria many people substitute bicycles or motor scooters for cars. This allows them a break from the long hours of walking that often fill rural life.

Urban Geography

In the precolonial era, the region of Nigeria was an overwhelmingly rural place. This does not mean that the region was without large cities. In fact, precolonial African cities were among the largest on the continent (e.g. Ibadan and Kano). Many of these cities also had long histories. The city of Kano had been existence for 900 years or more before the British came. The city of Benin also has a long history. While the colonial and the post-colonial periods did not introduce large-scale urbanization to Nigeria, urbanization has rapidly accelerated in the latter half of the twentieth century. Several factors have contributed to this trend. In the 1970’s, Nigeria began rapid development of its oil resources. Since this oil expansion occurred in an era of high oil prices, massive amounts of wealth flowed into the country. This money was principally controlled by the federal government, which initiated a large-scale program of urban development. This was most symbolically evident in the construction of the new capital city of Abuja in the center of the country. Other cities like Lagos and Kano, however, experienced building booms that attracted workers into the cities. New jobs in industries like construction led to multiplier effects that created new jobs in the service sector and in the informal sector (i.e. those outside of formal contractual employment or outside of legal employment). This and other factors (including rural poverty) led to massive waves of rural-urban migration in the 1970’s and the 1980’s. In fact, "during the 1970s Nigeria had possibly the fastest urbanization growth rate in the world. Because of the great influx of people into urban areas, the growth rate of urban population in Nigeria in 1986 was estimated to be close to 6 percent per year, more than twice that of the rural population." From 1970 to 1980, Nigeria’s urban population increased from sixteen percent to twenty percent of the national total. This figure is projected to rise to forty percent by the year 2010. While it is clear that the country as a whole is experiencing rapid urban growth, this does not mean that the dynamics of regional urban geography are the same throughout the country. Different regions and individual cities have unique histories and characteristics of site and situation that influence their urban development. A brief survey of this diversity will provide a more nuanced understanding of Nigerian cities.

One of the most basic factors in understanding urban geography is history. Specifically, it is important to understand the timeline and nature of a city’s urban development. Nigeria provides several contrasting examples of historical urban development. One useful distinction is between an indigenous city and a non-indigenous city. The distinction of indigenous / non-indigenous city basically refers to the development of the city relative to the British period of colonial rule. "Non-indigenous cities were planned and constructed during the colonial period (1900-1960). For example, Kano is referred to as an indigenous city.***** While Kano traces its origins to an era before the British arrived, the term "indigenous city" tells us little about the specific development of Kano. Indeed, Kano is among the oldest continuously occupied cities in all of sub-Saharan Africa. It traces its origins back to approximately 1000 A.D. The city did not develop its characteristic Islamic character, however, until after the coming of Islam in the fourteenth century. After the consolidation of Islam, Kano developed into a major terminus of trans-Saharan trade, supplementing its role as a center of religious teaching and education. The following passage provides a generalization of northern indigenous urban development.

The significance of this historical pattern of development is that many of the geographical dynamics mentioned above are still evident in the layout and landscapes of cities like Kano. For example, the influence of Islamic urban design is still strongly evident in the layout of Kano’s street network. In order to promote household privacy and the seclusion of women, many Islamic cities do not adhere to a regularized street network. Far from the regular, rectangular grid network that most Americans are accustomed to, the design of the Islamic city seeks to avoid long lines of sight and open vantage points. Kano is characteristic of this pattern (see graphics referenced in footnote 5).

Ibadan is another indigenous Nigerian city, located the southwest. While Ibadan is not as old as Kano, it does pre-date the coming of the British. Its contemporary prominence in Yorubaland (land of the Yoruba, one of Nigeria’s three largest ethnic groups) is largely attributable to Ibadan’s rise as an important city-state in the early to mid nineteenth century. In the period of British colonial rule, however, Ibadan was much more directly affected by European influence than northern cities like Kano. This is evident through landscape features derived from the influence of Christianity, western education, and the direct establishment of European Government Reserve Areas. The colonial influence in Ibadan is also marked by the differentiation of the new city, associated with British development, and the old city, associated with indigenous development. One of the most important attributes of indigenous urban development in Yorubaland is what is referred to as "densification."

Thus, while Ibadan is an indigenous city with significant aspects of colonial influence, other cities owe their present location to colonial influence. In some cases, the British established entirely new cities where none had existed before.

The case of Jos illustrates how colonial development and political policies often led to new urban geographies of ethnicity. As indicated, Jos became a center of commerce and administration affiliated with the development of the tin industry. Because indigenes of the Jos region were not willing or educated to fill commercial and administrative jobs in the newly established city of Jos (established in 1921), the British engineered the relocation of non-indigenous peoples to Jos. The largest of these groups was the Hausa. Yourbas, Igbos, and Africans from the Gold Coast and Sierra Leone also came to Jos to serve as merchants, civil servants, and clerks. To this day the vast majority (over ninety percent) of the residents of Jos are not indigenous to Jos’ surrounding region.

This case study of Jos illustrates a larger issue in Nigerian urban development. That is that Nigeria’s hundreds of ethnic groups are not distributed in completely homogenous regions. Nowhere is this truer than urban areas. Because cities often attract new migrants from various parts of the country, there is a considerable mixing of population that occurs within cities. This mixing of population is only true at the metropolitan urban scale, however. While individual cities may have heterogeneous populations, those populations may be distributed spatially in very concentrated ways. That is, ethnic quarters and neighborhoods are still prominent features of many Nigerian urban areas. The simultaneous mixing of populations and segregation of populations based on ethnicity represents at the micro scale one of the fundamental challenges for Nigeria in the years ahead. Can the extremely heterogeneous multi-national state function as a whole in the midst of ethnic conflict? In assessing this question in the future, one of the best places to look is Nigeria’s cosmopolitan cities. It is urban areas like Lagos, Kano, and Ibadan where ethnic violence often erupts. Indeed, the true ethnic nature of this violence is evident in the hierarchical diffusion of urban unrest. In the summer of 1999, for example, ethnic violence near Lagos soon spread to the northern city of Kano, resulting in reprisals by Hausas against minority Yorubas of Kano. Thus, it is realistic to hypothesize that cordial ethnic relations within Nigeria’s cities might bode well for ethnic relations for the country as a whole. While the verdict is still out on urban ethnic relations, it is clear that Nigeria’s cities face many other formidable challenges. The following section summarizes some of these developmental problems.

In many ways, Nigeria’s large urban areas are characteristic of urban processes observed in the developing world as a whole. Much of the growth (both in population and territory) in Nigeria’s cities has been unplanned and unregulated. Many of the new migrants to the cities have few secure prospects in their new urban home. While economic cycles come and go, unemployment in Nigeria persistently surpasses twenty percent. Thus, many of those seeking a better life in the city are often met with deflated dreams as they fail to find employment and a secure living environment. While the problem of uncontrolled urban growth is related to the phenomenon of ill-advised rural-urban migration, there are other factors that must not be overlooked. First, while in-migration contributes to urban growth, a sizable proportion of urban population growth is attributable to natural increase. While the rate of natural increase for the urban population is lower than that in rural areas (2.4% versus 3.0%), this is still a very high rate of growth. Hence, regardless of the impacts of migration, most Nigerian cities are expanding very rapidly. Second, urban metropolitan governance has been corrupt and inadequate to meet the rapid growth that has occurred in the last several decades. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the general economic malaise that the country has experienced has been central to the pattern of population growth without accompanying economic growth in Nigerian cities. After having detailed some of the broad problems of Nigerian urban development, it remains to discuss some of the specific problems that plague cities.

The most basic urban problems relate to human living conditions. Many residents of urban areas do not have such fundamental things as clean water, sanitation facilities, and suitable housing. This is sometimes related to the failures of the Nigerian political system. The city of Ibadan provides a good illustration of this issue. Until the early 1980’s, the Ibadan city government provided residents with a centralized water supply system. Due to a combination of corruption and fiscal imbalance, however, the city has stopped providing water for its residents. In the absence of government provision, individuals and groups had to seek other ways to acquire their water. Inevitably, this led to the drilling of thousands of new private wells and bore holes (i.e. a deeper well). These developments have not only brought about an extremely inefficient water system. This decentralized scheme of water supply leaves the entire water system more vulnerable to contamination, since the decentralized system depends upon so many individual supply sources.

Food security is another basic issue for many urban residents. Because many of Nigeria’s urbanites have difficulty finding sufficient formal employment, the interesting phenomenon of urban and peri-urban gardening has developed in many of Nigeria’s cities. For a short case study on urban gardening in the central Nigerian city of Jos, follow this link. The case study also provides some points for discussion and inquiry, focusing on comparative study between the United States and Nigeria.

Another major problem for both Nigerian cities and developing cities more generally is that of transportation. The area of transportation has many sub-issues that relate to the larger goal of moving people and goods from one place to another. The most basic is roads. Many Nigerian urban roads are in poor quality. In addition, road networks may be poorly planned and therefore impede the efficient transportation of people and goods. Inefficient planning is strongly related to years of rapid, uncontrollable urban growth. In the peripheries of cities like Lagos, urban slums are ill-served by the makeshift public infrastructure (including roads) that has developed. Lagos’ transportation problems have also been compounded by its geographical site (see map of Lagos). As the following summary states, however, there may be some hope of improving mobility within this sprawling megacity.

While Lagos is representative of Nigeria’s general pattern of unregulated urban growth, the new federal capital of Abuja is one city that was carefully planned and developed in a very short period of time. Funded by the infusion of oil wealth in 1970s and early 1980s, Abuja was to be the symbol of a new era for Nigeria. The relocation of the federal capital from Lagos in the extreme southwest arguably had several aims. The first was to establish a more central administrative center for the country as a whole. Second, Abuja’s location in the ethnically diverse middle belt region transferred the capital from the dominantly Yoruba region. Significantly, the new capital was not located in any of the other dominant ethnic groups’ home regions. Third, as mentioned earlier, the Lagos physical site had real limitations, and a new site in the central savanna region has been an improvement over the swampy, fragmented area of Lagos.

The construction of the new city of Abuja has not been without problems and controversy, however. There was a great deal of corruption and many shady cost overruns in the establishment of the new capital. Further, many Nigerians feel like the glitzy modern landscapes of Abuja have been constructed at the expense of other more pressing social and economic needs like education, rural electrification, and basic health services. Further, the city of Abuja itself is often criticized as being unfriendly to the common person. For example, there have been many complaints about the state of transportation in the city. This is especially relevant in a spatially extensive city like Abuja. Regardless of the criticisms, it is clear that Abuja has recently become a strong growth center within the country. Beyond its immediate metropolitan hinterland, it is possible that the development and growth of Abuja will redistribute some of the population from Nigeria’s densely populated northern and southern belts to the central savanna region of the country.

Web Resources for Nigerian Settlement Geography

• Global Urban Indicators Database
• Simple reference map with cities
• Index of main towns and cities (indexed by state)
• Chart listing distance between major cities
• Urban photo gallery: City of Ibadan. Traffic in Lagos. Another scene from Lagos (note the mosque in the background). Kano Mosque and Emir’s palace. Kano Emir’s gate. Hotel in Abuja. Mat market in Badagry. City Yellow shirts the police.
• Rural settlements gallery: A nucleated rural village in the North.
• City map of Kaduna
• City map of Lagos