Family and Social Change in an African City by Peter Marris

Author:Peter Marris [Marris, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, General
ISBN: 9781136531576
Google: -fr7AQAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-11-05T00:56:07+00:00

7

THE SLUM CLEARANCE SCHEME

THE standard of housing in Lagos is low. Most houses have neither piped water nor a sewage system. The only bathroom or lavatory may be a rough shelter of corrugated iron with a bucket, knocked together in a corner of the yard. Water has to be collected from a stand-pipe in the street, and latrine buckets collected by a service of the Town Council. There is no water-born sewage system for the city. In central Lagos the drains are open, often a shallow channel running down the middle of the lane, in which refuse and ordure float. In wet weather the drains overflow. In the older parts of the town, the houses are mostly of brick and concrete, with corrugated sheeting on the roof, but extensions of unlined weatherboard or iron have often been built onto them. The houses are poorly maintained, and within the slum clearance area they have deteriorated the more because improvements which would increase their value are prohibited. On the mainland, speculative builders have put up trade houses—large two-storey buildings, with lines of rooms opening off a corridor on each floor: they may contain two dozen tenant families, without any facilities for cooking or washing, apart from a small yard with a lavatory shed. On the outskirts of Lagos, beyond the township boundary, much of the building is in impermanent materials, and the roads are unmade. Apart from the suburbs where expatriates live, every part of Lagos is congested. In the four streets studied there were 3.5 people to a room, and most of these rooms were small, dark and poorly ventilated.

Apart from their inconvenience, such living conditions may do serious harm to the health of the people of Lagos. The commonest serious illnesses in the city are infective and parasitic diseases, expecially malaria; bronchitis and pneumonia; dysentery and diarrhoea; and skin complaints. The first three groups caused nearly half the deaths registered in 1947. These are all diseases likely to be aggravated or to spread more easily through dirt and overcrowding. The annual report of the Federal Medical Services for 1957 remarks, ‘The eradication, or diminution, of pneumonia and dysentery as causes of death are long-term projects, involving such social advances as slum clearance, better housing, waterborn sewage and, not least important, the education of the public in the proper use of these amenities . . .’ The report comments a few pages later, ‘The slum clearance scheme of the Lagos Executive Development Board, which is steadily going ahead, has not yet made any appreciable impact on many areas where living conditions generally, and the standards of environmental hygiene in particular, remained of a very low order. The array of street traders scattering litter, the lack of adequate kitchen and latrine accommodation in many of the houses, and the limited number of public dustbins—all contribute towards the existing unsatisfactory and in some cases appalling state of many side streets and alleys.’30 Apart from diseases, the congested streets probably also contributed to the number of accidents, which were responsible for more hospital admissions than any disease group.

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