While Nigerian politicians envision Lagos as a Dubai-like metropolis, Refuge Island, a community off the coast of Lagos, struggles with poverty and lack of basic amenities like electricity, clean water, and healthcare. Residents rely on generators and improvised filters for water, and the island lacks a hospital or properly functioning school. Despite its potential for tourism, Refuge Island's residents feel forgotten by the government, receiving only occasional short-term aid.
Politicians in Nigeria hope the country’s largest city will one day look like Dubai, but on nearby Refuge Island people live without electricityA dozen communities live on the island, which lies in a lagoon on the eastern fringes of Lagos and takes its name from the arrival of enslaved people fleeing the hinterland of westernFor power, its residents, mostly fishers or cassava, rice and corn farmers, rely on generators running on fuel that has become costly since a subsidy was scrapped.
Running east to west below Refuge Island is the Lekki peninsula, which has since the 1990s undergone rapid development that has made it one of Nigeria’s most prosperous neighbourhoods, home to upmarket malls, a recently launched deepwater seaport, and the world’s largest single-train oil refinery.Beyond the refinery and port, two forgotten islands lie hidden in plain sight in the lagoon: uninhabited Ita-Oko, which used to host a prison and then a drug rehabilitation centre, and Refuge Island.
There are many riverine communities around Lagos that have been left behind by the boom times and often lack basic amenities. Some house the descendants of people who migrated from the Benin Republic a century or more ago.
Nigeria Lagos Refuge Island Development Inequality Poverty
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