By Dr. Ugoji Egbujo

Biblical King Saul was once tormented by demons. When demons took hold of the king, David would be brought in. David would come with his harp to infuse musical harmony into the troubled soul of Saul. Once David started with his harp, the demons in Saul would yield. The demons didn’t flee because they hated music. But David’s harp oozed harmony. Harmony was the summit of order. David imposed order and made Saul’s soul uninhabitable to rancorous demons. The environmental revamp of Saul’s soul evicted the squatters in his mind. 

Ijora Olopa used to be a little ungoverned space. Though named after the police, it was a haven for petty rogues. Weeds provided shelter for hooligans and nuisance. Commuters were waylaid routinely and robbed on rainy days. Illegal bunkering happened under the Eko bridge by the lagoon. The link between Lagos mainland and Lagos Island harboured roaches and urchins. Like tormented Saul, Ijora Olopa was haunted. Then Fashola came and prioritized the restoration of order. As Saul didn’t rely on anti-psychotics, Fashola didn’t deploy more policemen to the area. He reclaimed spaces that harboured idleness, filth and evil and sought to impose beauty.

One of the reasons Lagos had seemed eternally unlivable was the prevalent spirit of haphazardness. It wasn’t just the danfo and okada that ran whatever lanes they liked in whatever direction they chose, like the lawless molue before them, there was a fundamental mentality issue. Patience was absent. Corners existed to be cut. People acted as if everything was scarce including time and space. Boundaries of priority were blurred. A culture that lent apparent legitimacy to cynical haste, pushing and shoving, and circumvention of rules. The more one behaved like a thug the more he felt he had mastered the city, its elusiveness and vicissitudes.  

After Fashola cleared up rat holes under bridges and flyovers and planted flowers, the city took on a new look. Hope was renewed. Besides aesthetics, a certain specie of evil that lurked in corners to torment motorists in traffic jams reduced on certain routes. Ijora Olopa was one of those territories exorcised of their many demons. Folks who used to perch on railings to defecate in the open stopped. The presence of flowers and lawns did more than add beauty and scent. It reformed minds. It chased away darkness and allowed light to shine through. Fashola tried to use horticultural beauty to calm the soul of a troubled temperamental city.

But there were critics. In a place where many lived homelessly and hungry and handrails of bridges were not spared by scavengers of dustbins, spending millions on flowers and lawns constituted a moral controversy. Especially after the budget for flowers and lawns showed that they had to be pampered like exotic pets while the squatters who were displaced by the gardens lived like animals. The plants enjoyed constant water from boreholes, electric generators, dedicated attendants, etc. Yet others argued that the gardens provided jobs raised horticultural awareness, cleaned the atmosphere by purifying the air and denied an opportunity to thieves. But it wasn’t a surprise that after Fashola, the flowers were neglected. Some said Ambode visited a piece of the vengeance he prepared for Fashola on the gardens. Others said the advantages notwithstanding, the project wasn’t economically sustainable. Regardless of the reason for letting many of the gardens become desolate, no city develops by flip-flopping. It’s been 4 years since Ambode. 

At Ijora Olopa now, motor mechanics and agberos have returned. The lawns have died and abandoned trucks now litter the space. Harmony has given way to disorder and filth. The hedges that haven’t been trampled to death by wayward okada riders droop like vultures with overgrown feathers. 

If the loss of aesthetics were the only problem, Lagos would endure. After all, Lagos endured watching okada orders rise against motorists, the police and the state government with impunity. Had the gardens survived, okada riders would have destroyed some of them casually. Perhaps the state government acted wisely in starving the gardens to death. But the death of the gardens at Ijora Olopa has allowed the return of chaos and crime to the area. Fashola had said the gardens denied criminal hiding places. Now have the criminals been asked to return? The problem is, as in biblical times when demons returned to cleansed souls, they returned in greater numbers and with a vengeance.

There is the other issue of anomie. The state govt had raised horticultural awareness with the gardens. Not a few passed by them and got infected with the desire to replicate them in their homes. A city that suffers one of the highest degrees of air pollution in the world should make a policy of encouraging gardens in every home. But what example does the state set when it spends million to plant gardens and watch them die and disappear? The greens didn’t die alone. They died with livelihoods. They died with law and order. The easy return dishevelment foists a sense of hopelessness on the people. 

This isn’t to say that the present state govt is lazy or irresponsible. It must have its priorities. The rail lines are seeing some activity at last. Apapa has been fairly decongested. Electric public buses have arrived. So the government isn’t in reverse gear. Though the danfo buses on Carter Bridge beside Ijora Olopa, run with their backs to circumvent the law against running against traffic, the state government appear forward-looking. But if the State governor visits Ijora Olopa and compares the current picture with the picture of the area during Fashola’s, he might realise there has been a massive retrogression in environmental care.  

One had thought that 8 years after Fashola, Lagos would be filled with gardens and birds singing of enhanced biodiversity. Electric buses l protect the environment and curb air pollution. But gardens should be restored. Imagine how a returning photography-loving tourist would feel if she returned to Ijora today. If such a tourist is found, she must not be allowed anywhere near the main gate of Festac town.