Life in Urban Southern Nigeria

As a followup to my post on Internet scams, let us take a look at urban Southern Nigeria, possibly the most crime-ridden place on the planet. We know a lot about the place because we have been fighting the scammers out of there for years. Nigeria and related places are hellholes, they are extremely dangerous, and the few Westerners crazy enough to go there lived in armed compounds with barbed wire around them and almost never go outside. That’s what the oil company compounds look like. The Secret Service was over there for a while working with the Nigerian government but they finally left. The government would not cooperate and the living conditions were so horrible that the agents could not stand it. Probably 9 It is much different in the Muslim north and the rural areas of the South may be ok. If you go to Lagos, as soon as you hit the airport, people will probably start trying to steal from you. Some of them will probably be workers at the airport. The first thing that hits you is the smell of garbage. The whole city smells like garbage, they just throw it everywhere. The roads are lawless, the cops are mostly crooks, and there are armed robbers on all the highways. There are crashes all the time on the highways due to crazy driving and useless roads, and if you go driving you will probably see flaming wrecks with bodies still in them. It takes hours for an ambulance to show up. As soon as a crash happens, people swarm all over it and steal everything they can and drive away.

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7 thoughts on “Life in Urban Southern Nigeria”

  1. “few Westerners crazy enough to go there lived in armed compounds with barbed wire around them and almost never go outside. That’s what the oil company compounds look like.”
    Everyone who is middle class lives in a compound there, not just whites. Not armed though, except in the Delta.
    As someone who travelled around southern Nigeria, I can say that it’s not necessarily dangerous (except the Delta area), just very chaotic shithole.
    “A culture of lying, thieving, conning and just all around criminal behavior has taken over the urban areas of the South such that Nigerians hardly even trust anyone.”
    It’s all about getting something over the next ethnic group, or village, or family. Remember that Africa was divided up with hardly any recognition of the borders of the ethnic groups, so many African countries are intra-competitive, rather then unified.
    Imagine if, after WW2, Europe was divided into randomly chosen shapes, which were then called countries. Would there be chaos? Sure. Would there still be chaos even now? Maybe.
    “There are crashes all the time on the highways due to crazy driving and useless roads, and if you go driving you will probably see flaming wrecks with bodies still in them. ”
    You are very imaginative. The driving is at Italian levels. In fact, Nigeria is the Italy of West Africa… prone to coups, chaos, and dictators.
    “some west African country (I forget which, but it doesn’t matter, they’re all the same)”
    In fact, Ghana is completely different. Much more laid-back and civilized.

  2. As I’ve said on this blog many times before, Blacks and urban areas just don’t mix very well…for a multitude of reasons, Blacks and Black culture has a very bad tendency to completely fall apart in urban areas.
    In my opinion the absolute worst places in the entire world are cities in Africa – of course the larger they are the worse they are.

  3. Ok, let’s be clear on a few things, the problems that Nigeria faces are quite large, but c’mon..who’re you kidding? As compared with the entire expanse of the USA, I’d say Nigeria isn’t doing badly at all! Crime is a factor, so are currupt practices, but who hasn’t got these problems? If, in 21st Century politics, the self-styles ‘free country’ aka, the USA can blatantly a) rig elections to favour a known warmonger and draft dodger, 2) proceed to first disrespect and abuse the sovereign status of a nation, and then do it AGAIN to a second nation, with the flimsy excuse of a search for purported ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and a supposed terrorist, and 3) prove its truly racist nature by swinging in one great white majority to the only television network that stood against the newly elected black president of the country (see the Nielsen Polls for Fox Television in March 2009), you really think I’m going to listen to the lies and propaganda of another obviously inbred redneck fool? Think again. Iv lived in the south, west and the east of Nigeria and can tell you that iv never witnessed a scene of corpse-robbery as you described in your article, what I HAVE experienced however, is a near-fatal shootout within 45mins of arriving in L.A.X airport..so really, isn’t it ironic that you’re pointing elsewhere when the issues are worse at home? We know this trick..between the Carlyle Foundation and the US Defence Dept, we fell for the same thing when you screamed ‘war on terror!!’ a few years ago..we’re smarter now..think up another one.

    1. Thank you Andre.
      As a Nigerian who grew up in Nigeria and now lives in the UK, I am HIGHLY offended by this article because it is totally exaggerated.
      It’s because of people like you Robert Lindsay that Nigerians are not motivated to move forward as a people.
      People squat on the streets? What part of Lagos did YOU go to? Because where I live, there is never any such activity. I have never seen an armed robber in all my life and I’m 22 this year… that’s not so little is it Robert dear?
      “The first thing that hits you is the smell of garbage. The whole city smells like garbage, they just throw it everywhere. ”
      Are you kidding me?
      Stop bashing my country and get a life. Your country is part of the reason we are the way we are.
      Silly, ignorant little boy you are Robert.

    2. K, thanks for the clarification. It seems to me that people will believe virtually any bad thing said about Africa without even questioning the accuracy of it; Not to mention people talk about Africa like it’s a country rather than a continent.

  4. Oooh Andre, you have to tell him
    just a hating man this one.
    If you want to escape this all together, i suggest you jump off the WTC..oops thats been erased…umh umh, just go bury yourself

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