By Tajudeen Sowole
Although, the new book, Sandbank City: Lagos at 150, chronicles colonial and post-independence
eras, but the complexity of preserving the city’s heritage is more pronounced
in the work authored by Prof John Godwin (OFR OBE)
and Gillian Hopwood (MFR).
PRESENTED
yesterday at The Wheatbaker, Ikoyi, Lagos, Godwin and Hopwood's book is, no
doubt, a comprehensive documentation that may become a reference point in
today’s management of a city in transition. More importantly, in a mono economy
environment such as Nigeria's, which is largely built on oil revenue, the place
of history and heritage underscores the significance of tourism contents such
as monuments, among the highlights of the book.
With
choices of Lagos State Commissioner for Tourism and Inter-governmental
Relation, Disu Holloway for the Preface and one of Nigeria's renowned town
planners Prof Akin Mabogunje for the Foreword, the synergy between monuments
and tourism have been properly articulated by the authors.
The Prologue of the 202-page book brings two sides of gain and loss in
preservation of monuments, which, perhaps represents the contents and
characters of the individuals, governments and institutions mentioned in the
book.
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Cover
of the book
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The authors, for example, note two of
the oldest monuments along inner Marina, still standing today: the Government
House (now Governor’s Lodge), built in 1894 and the Government Secretariat,
1895. Having lived and worked in Nigeria, Lagos Island specifically,
since 1954, the authors, no doubt are great resource persons on the thematic
engagement of the book.
Divided into 10 parts, the book starts with the Part 1, Summary of the Story, in which the authors note the similarity
between Lagos, Singapore and Hong Kong as “strategic trading enclaves” created
by the British Empire. Though they avoid comparing the rate of development
among the three cities, but argue that Lagos “certainly has made a name for
itself,” sometimes, for the wrong reason of lacking in urban planning, despite
rise in population, particularly on the mainland axis of the state.
As
natives of Britain, the authors recall their coming to Nigeria as “raw recruits
in 1954,” who were “fashionably anti-colonial” and expected to stay here “for just
18 months and return home.” From then on, they have decided to stay and share a
“different life and understanding other cultures” as one of the sub headings in
Part 1 explains. In fact, Godwin in a short documentary viewed about a week
before the book launch claimed: “we are Lagosians.”
Perhaps, diverse views of Lagos,
captured by different writers in newspaper articles and books have not really
kept pace with the city’s challenges, so suggests Part 2, Writing About Lagos. Two of the major references include Alister
Macmillan’s 1920 publication titled The
Red Book of West Africa and a 2005 documentation, Lagos: A City At Work published by Glendora.
The consequence of under-assessing the
city, perhaps portends great infrastructural deficit, as a 1998 study by a team
from Harvard University, U.S. raised the alarm. Referencing the study, Godwin
and Hopwood disclose that among the “hair-raising conclusions” of the Harvard
study, showed Lagos as a “lesson” for the future “of all our cities and that we
might already be on the threshold of a revolution in a new planning strategy
for survival in our cities.”
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Lumpkin
House on Abibu Oki Street, Lagos Island is one of the renovated remnants of
post-1861 heritages.
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Parts 3 to 6 revisited the efforts of various governments from the
colonial eras to 2007 in creating a city as well as a state. However, Part 7, Nigeria’s Capital appears like the heart
of the book. It listed four most crucial periods in the history of Lagos. These
include the colonial era, under the Governor, Lord Lugard; the military years
of Brigadier Mobolaji Johnson, when the first post-colonial attempt at restructuring
Lagos came; first civilian government in Lagos headed by Alhaji Lateef Jakande
when the state had enormous, but short-lived development; the Senator Bola
Ahmed Tinubu-Babatunde Raji Fashola eras currently pushing for the megacity
status, despite political and socio-economic constrains.
Among several areas Jakande impacted on
the state, the authors note, included restructuring of the school system,
establishment of State Television and Radio stations. Under the sub-topic of
the same part, Messrs Bola Tinubu and Babatunde Fashola (1999 till date), the
authors argue, “together” the two governors “are responsible for finally
grappling with the huge infrastructural problems of the state in the face
of apparently uncontrollable population growth.” Indeed, the Tinubu-Fashola
eras would go down in the history of Lagos as periods of the most aggressive
development. This much appeared to have earned the state’s metropolis a recent
recognition as one of 25 most innovative cities in the world (only two from
Africa, including Cape Town, South Africa), courtesy of two internationally
renowned organizations, Citi Group and Urban Land Institute.
THE
last three parts of Sandbank City: Lagos
at 150 highlights the monuments under such headings as The Building Heritage, The
Town Engineers’ Problems and Planning:
Crisis Management. The opening
sentences of the first of the three parts explicitly celebrate the city’s
heritage: “In 1950, Lagos had a remarkable heritage of impressive buildings
from the past. It is unfortunate, however, that many have been destroyed to
create valuable sites for profitable developments, without providing, even a
photographic record. Practically, nothing is left of the time before 1861.”
And in preservation of whatever is left
of heritage buildings in Lagos, Godwin and Hopwood’s aesthetic perspective may
not be solely from the prism of the couple’s attachment to their 1971 Land
Rover model; the octogenarians appear as contemporary as hybrid vehicle.
For example, one of their works – as
restorers – is the Lumpkin House on Abibu Oki Street, Lagos Island, which was
renovated in 1993 for the Leventis Foundation is a modest example of how to be
modernist without losing the past. Also, Godwin’s input into the ongoing
renovation of one of the remnants of post-1861 buildings mentioned in the book,
the Ilojo Bar at Tinubu Square, Lagos Island showed a blend of contemporaneity
and the past. In 2011, during a visit to the site, in company of the
Director-General of the National Commission for Museums for Monuments (NCMM),
Mallam Yusuf Abdallah Usman, he (Godwin) assured that today’s design dynamics
and taste would be considered. He however warned that restorations would not change the original features such as the designs
and peculiar columns to retain the Portuguese identity of the building.
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Prof John Godwin and Gillian Hopwood Godwin.
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The coordinator of the book’s
presentation, Sandra Obiago says it is “a fascinating account of how Lagos
was experienced ‘from the time of the Bini overlords’ to Nigeria’s
independence, through the turbulent sixties to the anxieties and
infrastructural deficits of the nineties and finally to the resilience, hope
and inspirational change of the present.”
Godwin
and Hopwood are architects who have been cataloguing and photographing the
growth of the Lagos metropolis in the past decades. They are celebrated
authors whose previous books include The
Architecture of Demas Nwoko, and Fifty
Years of Sailing in Lagos 1932-1982. Their commitment to the preservation
of historical buildings in Nigeria led them to found a not-for-profit group,
Legacy1995, which has been credited with restoration of many historical
structures in Lagos.
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