Why Lagos, Nigeria, Is the Cultural Capital We're Heading to Next

When I was commissioned to write a feature on Lagos, Nigeria, for Condé Nast Traveler, none of us imagined that innocent people would be gunned down in the city for peacefully protesting against police brutality. Those young people, who joined the #EndSARS movement to demand dignity and freedom, are testament to Lagos's enduring spirit. This piece is dedicated to all those who died. May their energy and defiance live on.

Switching from the slumber of middle-class England to the sensory explosion that is Lagos was a transition I had to make during childhood summers. Life in the southwestern county of Surrey was punctuated by returns to Nigeria, where I was born, enforced by parents who were hell-bent on neutralizing my Britishness. Reaching our hometown of Port Harcourt involved stopping over at relatives' houses in Lagos, and even at that young age, the big-city charge of the then capital—its noise and swagger—was magnetic, repellent, and always unforgettable.

The last time I took an extended trip here was in 2007, at the beginning of a four-and-a-half-month odyssey around the country for my book, Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria. There was an organized chaos to it. I was intimidated by the density and impatience of the crowds and the kamikaze okada—motorcycle taxis—that flew at me from every direction. It was a steam pot of vehicle fumes and go-slow traffic jams that vendors wove through, selling anything from squash rackets to books with titles like How to Get Fat, while self-styled preachers on the distinctive yellow danfo (minibuses) laid seven shades of Jesus on their fellow passengers; an urban jungle with the Darwinian survival ethos of Texas and the infrastructure of Kinshasa, where islands of staggering wealth existed without shame in a lake of poverty. If Lagos were a person, she would wear a Gucci jacket and a cheap hair weave, cruising in her Porsche over rain-flooded potholes. In a nation where the middle class has atrophied and the rich got rich very quickly, the poor were not irrational for believing that prosperity was within their reach. Nearly everyone had a side hustle, with even university lecturers supplementing their income by hawking Chinese cure-all teas on public transport. Rawness abounded. Read the full travel article here.