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Nigeria URBANIZATION
Throughout Africa societies that had been predominantly
rural
for most of their history were experiencing a rapid and
profound
reorientation of their social and economic lives toward
cities
and urbanism. As ever greater numbers of people moved to a
small
number of rapidly expanding cities (or, as was often the
case, a
single main city), the fabric of life in both urban and
rural
areas changed in massive, often unforeseen ways. With the
largest
and one of the most rapidly growing cities in sub-Saharan
Africa,
Nigeria has experienced the phenomenon of urbanization as
thoroughly as any African nation, but its experience has
also
been unique--in scale, in pervasiveness, and in historical
antecedents.
Modern urbanization in most African countries has been
dominated by the growth of a single primate city, the
political
and commercial center of the nation; its emergence was,
more
often than not, linked to the shaping of the country
during the
colonial era. In countries with a coastline, this was
often a
coastal port, and in Nigeria, Lagos fitted well into this
pattern. Unlike most other nations, however, Nigeria had
not just
one or two but several other cities of major size and
importance,
a number of which were larger than most other national
capitals
in Africa. In two areas, the Yoruba region in the
southwest and
the Hausa-Fulani and Kanuri areas of the north, there were
numbers of cities with historical roots stretching back
considerably before the advent of British colonizers,
giving them
distinctive physical and cultural identities. Moreover, in
areas
such as the Igbo region in the southeast, which had few
urban
centers before the colonial period and was not highly
urbanized
even at independence, there has been a massive growth of
newer
cities since the 1970s, so that these areas in 1990 were
also
highly urban.
Cities are not only independent centers of concentrated
human
population and activity; they also exert a potent
influence on
the rural landscape. What is distinctive about the growth
of
cities in Nigeria is the length of its historical
extension and
the geographic pervasiveness of its coverage.
Data as of June 1991
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