Festac Town, Lagos: The Sad Story Of A Beautiful Estate Turned Slum

Festac Town, Lagos, once in the rank of top federal estates in Nigeria, has gradually grown into a slum, and residents fear that it might soon replace Ajegunle as the ghetto headquarters of Lagos

By Chuks OLUIGBO

Festac 1st Gate under reconstruction

 

Festac Town (or Festival Town, as it was originally called) took its name from the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, tagged FESTAC ’77, hosted in Lagos, Nigeria. The festival, originally scheduled to hold in 1975 during the military regime of General Yakubu Gowon, was put forward due to the political instability in Nigeria then. It was later held in 1977 during General Olusegun Obasanjo’s regime.

Before General Gowon accepted to host the festival, he had conceived a mass housing programme for Nigerians, most especially civil servants living in the major urban cities of Lagos, Kaduna and Port Harcourt. It was partly for this reason that a very large expanse of land, mostly swamp, was acquired in the Lagos area under Decree 40 of 1973 for the purpose of constructing a massive estate. However, when the issue of hosting FESTAC ’77 came up, the original estate was quickly re-planned and hastened to meet the need to house the contingents from across Africa and the world to the festival. Before then, the ancient city of Badagry was the only known town within the vicinity of Ojo, and what is today known as Lagos/Badagry Expressway had not been constructed. The only road linking the rest of Lagos to Badagry was the Old Ojo Road.

When the festival ended and the contingents departed, the buildings (comprising different ranges of flats and houses) within the first phase of Festac Town covering the whole areas within 1^st Avenue through 2^nd Avenue, 7^th Avenue and 4^th Avenue, already completed and commissioned, were allocated to various categories of civil servants through a very transparent ballot process under the supervision of Mr S. P. O. Fortune Ebie, first General Manager of the Federal Housing Authority, FHA, and administrator of Festac from 1976 to 1983. Four categories of forms were sold for the ballot: the N2, N3, N5, and N10 categories. At the end, houses were allocated to winners, on owner-occupier basis, according to the categories as well as people’s level of income at the time. The forms for the ballot made provision for would-be beneficiaries to indicate their salary scale. The essence of this was to ensure that the allottees would be able to defray the cost of the houses through monthly mortgage repayment.

A Section of 4th Avenue road, now impassable

 The first batch of allotees moved into Festac in 1977. Then, the town was a haven of some sort. Describing the estate in those early years, Mr Jola Ogunlusi, President of Festival Town Residents Association, FTRA, and a beneficiary of the house allocation who moved into Festac in 1978, said: “I used to call Festac little London when we came in, little London in the sense that almost everything that makes the city of London beautiful was in place in Festac. Our electricity was functioning 24 hours. All areas within the water lines, because there were new areas where they could not extend water to, received water 24 hours. Our streets were as clean as the streets of London. In the evening you did not need to drive with your headlamps on. The streetlights were functioning, and they were enough for you to drive in all the major roads. The gutters were so neat that people used to wash their clothes with water that flowed in the gutters. There were no weeds in any part of the roads to Festac. Trees were planted in major roads and they were beautiful. Every street had a recreation park. The parks were beautifully decorated and well provided with recreation facilities for both children and adults. There were platforms where one could sit and read newspapers. The buffer zone, nobody had tampered with it as it is today. It was a fine protective area for Festac. The gates were well designed and neat. There were three gates that entered Festac then; now we have four. They were in good shape. All the kiosks we now have in Festac were not there. The arrangement of the town was perfect. The general manager then was par excellence. He was a workaholic. He went round all the three communities that we were running then every evening to see whether anybody was dropping any dirt. Our sanitation was excellent. In fact, what later became compulsory monthly national sanitation exercise was first introduced in Festac, and it was very effective. Both the fencing and the gates in the houses then were approved by the FHA, not this one people barricade themselves today as if they are in a prison yard.”

Also, Sir Shadrack Amadi, who has lived in Festac since 1977, said: “There were good roads, regular water supply, constant electricity, and FHA officials provided good supervision. There were stand-by generators, about 500 KVA, located in different zones all over Festac, which supplied power whenever there was power outage.”

But then, not too long after, things began to go bad and degradation set in. The original plan of Festac was violated. Buildings began to be erected on open spaces, parks, playgrounds, sewage pipelines, and even on top of cables. For instance, the place where Ituah Hospital is located at 512 Road is said to be a recreation park, while a building located at 401 Road, B Close, belonging to a certain Chief Bony Ebili is said to be sitting on top of cables. These are just a few glaring examples. And so, the original underground wiring in the estate gave way to surface wiring because cable junctions could no longer be traced underground. Regular power supply became a problem. There seemed to have been a misunderstanding between the FHA authorities and officials of the National Electricity Power Authority, NEPA, over certain issues bordering on who would run and maintain the stand-by generators and who would collect service charges. When the two agencies could not reach a compromise, the generators were abandoned. When the military boys came, some of them took some of these generators, partly or wholly, to their respective homes for personal use. The fragments they left behind were allowed to rot away completely.

A section of the undeveloped area of 6th Avenue

Gradually too, other infrastructures began to decay. Today, Festac could be said to have all or most of the characteristics of a slum. The roads are in a state of total disrepair. The taps have gone dry and people now make do with well water. There is poor drainage and its attendant flooding. The sewage system has collapsed, leading to constant outflow of sewage and the resultant pollution. Uncontrolled influx of people into Festac also led to overcrowding, housing shortage, rise of shanties, as well the presence of miscreants which has also resulted to high rate of insecurity.

Taking a tour round Festac, the present writer observed that all over Festac, the roads are death traps. There is hardly any stretch of road that is devoid of deadly potholes which continue to deteriorate. Residential areas have been converted to shops, schools, hotels, factories, offices, etc. Having no proper waste disposal system, residents have resorted to indiscriminate dumping of refuse. The few recreation parks that have not been sold have been abandoned and overgrown with weeds. Only perhaps the 206 Park, now renamed Victory Park, still has some life in it. There is a mechanic workshop in virtually every corner of Festac, and there are loafers everywhere, but especially at the 23 Road Market where rough looking young men are seen smoking Indian hemp in the open without any form of disturbance. Also, the undeveloped areas of 6^th Avenue are filled with shanties which serve as residence for all manners of people. The Festac side of the buffer zone, which stretches the entire length of 2^nd Avenue, from 7^th Avenue to the 1^st Avenue end of it, has been converted into one huge mechanic village. There are also car marts, churches, and a variety of shanties which serve as either shops or residential houses. All these have contributed in no small measure to the degradation of Festac.

Commenting on the state of Festac today, Sir Amadi said that Festac is now an abandoned estate. In his words: “Festac has been abandoned and forgotten by FHA, the federal government, and even the state government. Festac is now a complete jungle. There is no difference between Festac and Ajegunle. For close to 15 years now that the taps in Festac stopped running, we have not had water. So, we started digging wells all around, that’s what we have been using for many years now, until people started sinking boreholes where people now go to fetch clean water for drinking. Otherwise it would have been disastrous. There are no roads in Festac now. All the areas reserved for games, they have all been sold to individuals, buildings are erected on top of pipelines and sewage lines. Nothing like sewage disposal again. Even the sewage machines that used to pump sewage, melt it into water and empty it into the lagoon have all packed up. No single sewage machine is working in Festac today. We have already started witnessing sewage eruption because they are being packed full, nobody is dislodging them. Only God knows what Festac would be like in the next 5 to 10 years when these sewage tanks would have been blocked completely.”

Another section of 4th Avenue road blocked by refuse

Also, Mr Anselem Nnabuife, managing director of Shaka Properties Limited, who has been in Festac since 1993, regretted that a beautiful estate like Festac, a place everybody wanted to be in the past, was allowed to get to its present level of degradation. Describing the sorry state of Festac, he said: “Today, there are no roads, no water, no light. The sewage system is in a mess. The disease that the dilapidated sewage has caused in Festac is beyond explanation. In fact, Festac is not habitable right now. It is a very bad environment for someone to live in, especially children. Go to hospitals in Festac and see children with various manners of illnesses that doctors cannot explain, all due to dirty environment and pollution.”

Another resident, Mrs Christy Onwuegbusi, director of American Family Fashion at 23 Road Shopping Complex, who has lived in Festac since the early 1990s, said: “Festac has become a horrible place to live in. Formerly it was comparable to Ikoyi and Victoria Island, but now it is a semi-Ajegunle. A lot of things have gone wrong. No infrastructure, no water, no electricity, no roads.” Asked whether she would remain in Festac if the present situation persists, she simply said: “I don’t think so”.

But how did so beautiful an estate grow so bad? Many residents continue to point accusing fingers at FHA. Mr Nnabuife maintained that it was FHA that sold the glory of Festac. “Some of the general managers came in and sold playgrounds where sewage and cables were channelled. Also, they are robbing Festac residents. The residents pay ground rent, tenement rate, and different other rates. And FHA has not done anything positive with all this money. They create additional problems for people because they would not allow the state government or even the local government to come in because this is federal government jurisdiction. One begins to wonder, is it human beings that are in charge of this place or animals? At a point, FHA came and formed some committees, and we thought they were coming to put things in order. The next thing they did was to place a very huge tax on lands in the area, that before you develop any land, you must pay N1000 per square metre. That means if you have up to 1000 square metres, you have to pay N1,000,000 before you start putting anything on the ground. And now they have increased it to N2,000. After that, you will also have to pay up to N500,000 before they can give you approval of the building. They collect all this money with the hope of developing Festac, but that has not happened. It is still individuals that do the roads leading up to where they want to develop lands,” he said.

On his part, Sir Amadi said that part of the problem was that FHA as an agency has moved completely to Abuja, leaving only a micro-office in Festac. “We don’t feel their impact. I don’t know what they are there for. We don’t hear from them. As it is, it appears that all they do now is collect their salary and go. They are just there, sitting and doing nothing. Look at the dilapidated roads, it doesn’t bother them. Nothing bothers them, even if buildings are collapsing today.”

But while negligence and lack of maintenance may be key to the degradation in Festac, one other possible contributing factor may be overpopulation. That Festac is overcrowded, much like every other part of Lagos, is not in doubt. And rapid population influx into an area, no doubt, leads to congestion, problem of housing, appalling and chronic overcrowding, high rate of deterioration of the existing facilities and amenities resulting from overuse, and the attendant rise of slums or semi-slums. This, to say the least, is the situation in Festac today.

A block of flats in a state of disrepair

But in spite of this dilapidated state of Festac, the cost of housing in Festac has remained at an all-time high. For instance, a 2-bedroom flat which used to be rented at about N20,000 around 1994 now goes for between N300,000 and N350,000, and the intending tenant must pay for 2 years, plus the so-called agency and agreement fees. Privately-built duplex which used to go for between N100,000 and N200,000 is now rented at N1.5million and above.

Is there any hope of respite soon? Many residents seem to think otherwise. However, during the 30^th anniversary celebration of Festac held in March 2008, General Yakubu Gowon (Rtd) who was the guest speaker promised that Festac would be restored to its old glory. To start with, he admonished original winners of the houses to begin by repainting their buildings to their original colours. So far, many residents have complied with that directive. They have painted their blocks to look as neat as they were in 1977. However, the scenario just presents a clear picture of the proverbial painted sepulchre. Residents have to pass through deadly roads, breathe in foul air polluted by sewage eruptions, and scale through filthy environment to get into beautifully-painted apartments where there is no electricity and no water.

As it is, Festac residents are only hopeful that they might be remembered someday. Unless something is done, and urgently too, Festac will in a couple of years from now take over from Ajegunle as the ghetto headquarters of Lagos.