A TV series exploring daily life in Lagos finds its inhabitants coping in extreme circumstances with startling ingenuity. It is initially hard to see why Lagos has been called the "megacity of the future", with the potential to become the "Singapore of Africa". There's plenty to think about if the Nigerian city of 16 million tightly packed inhabitants is the ultimate expression of modern urban living. Lagos is growing at such an astonishing rate that by 2015 it is predicted to be the third largest city in the world, behind Mumbai and Tokyo, but it is an unlikely model metropolis.
Although the country has vast oil resources, the city's infrastructure is appalling. Three-quarters of Lagos residents live in slums. The rail network manages one train per week. Despite being the world's sixth biggest oil producer, power cuts are a daily occurrence and a national joke. Lagosians have renamed the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) as Never Expect Power Always.
When I first visited Nigeria, my parents' homeland, a decade ago, I was unprepared for the reality. It was like landing on another planet. Although the city is a nightmare to navigate, the Lagosians are a breed apart. Millions of quick-witted economic migrants have created a city characterised by personal ingenuity and entrepreneurship. Nothing is wasted, everything is a commodity. "Lagos is not a kind of backward situation but an announcement of the future," the architect Rem Koolhaas has said. "What is now fascinating is how, with some level of self-organisation, there is a strange combination of extreme underdevelopment and development."
Will Anderson, the series producer of Welcome to Lagos, a fascinating new three-part documentary, agrees. He believes the way they have addressed the problems of extreme population growth is a lesson for us all, especially now that half the world's population live in cities, including one billion slum dwellers. "I am an anthropologist by background, but rather than looking at marginal and tribal populations, I wanted to look at massive cities. If a Martian came down to Earth, they would report back that we are a species that lives in cities. And in some degrees the people in Lagos are doing it better than we are in the west," he says.
The series looks at life on the Olusosun rubbish dump, the workplace and home to more than 1,000 scavengers who sift the garbage looking for recyclable material. This is a vibrant, self-policing community living next to a mosque, a barber's shop and three cinemas. The film-makers also take us to Makoka lagoon where 300,000 people live on water and in squatter camps on the beach. It is soon clear that most Lagos residents will do anything to earn a few dollars a day, from back-breaking labour to sharp business deals, because there is no welfare state to provide a safety net.
But among Lagosians, who tend to combine relentless entrepreneurial flair with the belief that God will provide, there is little time for self-pity, a fact reflected in the series. "We did not want the people to come across as victims because that is not how they see themselves," says Anderson. "They are normal people doing what they have to do to survive. They encounter the same obstactles as the rest of us, but it's just that they do so in extreme circumstances."
Welcome to Lagos will be shown on BBC 2 at 9pm on 15, 22 and 29 April