KAI KAI (Kick Against Indiscipline)

bye bye flower beds

The Baron Haussmann opened large avenues in Paris, destroying insalubrious areas and replacing them with sumptuous hôtels particuliers and 5 or 6 stories buildings with finely chiselled stone facades. Two centuries later they are still up and fanciful. The creation of large avenue has also simplified traffic in the city.
The city lives, the city evolves and evolution is sometimes synonymous with sudden and harsh transformation.

Lagos is being cleaned-up by an initiative called Kick Against Indiscipline (KAI), perhaps with the hope that with a few kicks in the butt it could become as orderly and charming as Switzerland under the tropics.
Well that is a tall order for a city where informal is the norm and where survival mode is a way of life. But it would be retrograde to think that things can't change for the better. For instance creation of taxi parks for buses off the side of the road can remedy traffic jams as proved by the one created at the exit of Third Mainland Bridge when one reaches the mainland. Before its creation, buses and mini-buses were struggling and overflowing on the express way to let passengers embark and disembark under the directions of the touts shouting the destination of the buses. This was creating heavy traffic jams on the bridge. Now it seems that things have improved a bit. Perhaps also as a result of the fuel price increase a few month ago, which prompted drivers to put less fuel in their cars and henceforth be less on the road.

a new Ikoyi will be born

One example of desired orderliness is the absence of hawkers on the road who are considered as potential thieves. The risk is a $300 fine respectively for the seller and the buyer if both are caught. Another one is the forced closure of all small street shops, market stalls, food stalls that do not have a proper licence (i.e. not paying local tax). Finally car-sharing is discouraged progressively on the Lekki bridge which used to have always a crowd of passengers waiting for a space in private cars to cross the bridge. This was helping private car drivers to pay for fuel and maintenance of their cars by collecting a small fee from passengers. Now every morning "Man-o-war"s, name for traffic agents, are pushing the passengers  further and further inside the bridge so that it is less convenient for them to be picked-up by private cars.

take what you can before it is too late

On Glover road, in Ikoyi, all flower-beds (plant nurseries set-up on the side of the road) have now been displaced. Instead what used to be a manicured green space is now bare ground strewn plastic water sachets plastic.

protected hairdresser, for how long?

My driver was commenting that as all roadside food stalls were being removed, ordinary workers did not have a place to eat anymore. So they were thinking of getting someone from the compound to start cooking for them as couldn't afford buying food in a supermarket or a restaurant (provided there was one nearby).

The underlying question is what will happen to all those people who made a living on the side of the street in downtown Lagos if they can't make a living there anymore? What will they do? Where will they go?