Becoming…in Lagos: a time-narration approach to city-identification in an African metropolis

ABSTRACT

The “public narratives” of Africa’s largest metropolis—Lagos—in terms of “Ilu Eko” and “No Man's Land” pave a path to exploring “ontological narratives” which Lagosresidents use to make sense of urban lives. By employing a time-narrationapproach, which emphasizes the narrativity of open-ended life-story interviewsbased on ethnographic fieldwork, to interpret identificationdiscourses and practices in everyday life, this paper makes arguments in three aspects ofbecoming: “becoming urban” is not a definite consequence for urban dwellers, andthus the urban should be further specified to how the particular city—Lagos—play roles in life trajectories; structural constraints in Lagos make work and marriage firmlybound in the process of settling down—so called “becoming settled”—from whichdifferent people narrate time in distinctive ways; discourses of becoming “Lagosian”are involved with becoming less or more “Yoruba”, which varies according tointerpersonal interactions among people in everyday life.

KEYWORDS:

• Becoming
• time-narration
• identity
• subjectivity
• Lagos

Acknowledgement

I thank Bob Kaiser, Matt Turner and Kris Olds for constructive comments and suggestions. My gratitude and appreciation also extend to audiences at the 2017 European Conference on African Studies in Basel, the 2017 African Studies Association Annual Conference in Chicago and the African Centre for Cities International Conference in 2018 at the University of Cape Town.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The Awori people, a sub-group of Yoruba, migrated from Ile-Ife and became the earliest settlers in this coastal region (Peil, 1991, p. 5). With Benin Empire’s conquer and British colonial occupation, many other Yoruba sub-groups came to work and then settle down in Lagos (Mann, 2007).

2. Gowon Estate is defined in a narrow sense, referring the area of those four-storey buildings built by the Federal Government, excluding the areas where houses and compounds are built by wealthier individuals.

3. Except eight interviewees shown in the table, I also interviewed Osundu’s eldest son Greg, Adebiyi’s youngest son Yomi, Frank’s wife Nancy, Andy’s girlfriend Helen, Jack’s mother andFemi’s father.

4. CDA, Community Development Association, is an autonomous organization in Nigeria, taking charge of community affairs. Gowon Estate now has three CDAs, in the north, central and south areas.

5. By examining demographic data, Potts (2012) argues that Nigeria’s level of urbanization has also been significantly over-estimated.

6. APC, All Progressives Congress, a Nigerian political party

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by the Graduate School's Student Research Travel Grant and Mellon-Wisconsin Fellowship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.