The Lagos of My Imagination

There’s a sense in which my view of Lagos is bound up with my very young days in Ọ̀ṣun State. I was surrounded by many things, and one of these was the lore of Lagos as spun by small town folk. 

The importance of landmarks, symbolism and myth making in the construct of the city, came to me early.

And the sea! The ever living breath of the city. To go to Lagos was to behold the majesty of the sea. Notions of adventure and new horizons, if only you ever got the chance or drummed up the chutzpah to embark on the journey! 

When someone arrived from Lagos people would call them ‘Ará Èkó’ – the people of Lagos – as second person reference or third. Frozen fish was ‘Òkú Èkó’ – the dead of Lagos – since they were once-living beings fished from the sea, the sea itself synonymous with Lagos.

The glamour, the romance, the distant glory of Lagos; I was very conscious of these.

And ‘Sójà Ìdúmọ̀tà’ – to go to Lagos was to look in awe at the cenotaph of the Unknown Soldier, and that was held to be an experience worth having. ‘Èkó gbolè, ó gbọ̀lẹ’, people would say – Lagos favours the thief and the idler.

The need to have your smarts, spoken as praise of the city, where you could fashion your own destiny if only you dare. Fortune favours the brave.

The Lagos of the late 70s was bewitching. City lights upon the water at night, breathtaking. Even now a night drive over the lagoon still has the capacity to distill the urban sprawl and its aggravations and hard edges into a scene of pure beauty.

It is to this Lagos of my childhood that I return, now and again, in my writing. The Lagos of my imagination.