Lagos is the second least liveable city in the world in 2021, after Damascus

Lagos City of Nigeria has been ranked the second-worst city to live in.

Nollywood needs to stop preaching the gospel that there’s money in Lagos, I believe they play a major role to the population in Lagos. Below are some facts about Lagos.

Lagos is the most populous city in Nigeria and the second-largest city in Africa after Kinshasa, DRC, having a population of 14.8 million as of 2021 within the city proper. The Lagos metropolitan area has a total population of 21.3 million, making it the second-largest metropolitan area in Africa, after Cairo. Lagos is a major African financial center and is the economic hub of Lagos State and Nigeria at large. The megacity has the fourth-highest GDP in Africa and houses one of the largest and busiest seaports on the continent. It is one of the fastest-growing cities in the world and has been ranked the second-worst city after Damascus.

The data is based on a survey collected between February 22nd to March 21st, 2021, and looked at issues such as border closures, ability to handle health crisis, and roll out of vaccinations. To rank the cities, the report focuses on five broad categories: stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure. Every city is assigned a rating for relative comfort for over 30 qualitative and quantitative factors across the categories.

While Auckland in New Zealand has been named the world’s most liveable city in an annual ranking that has been shifted by the coronavirus pandemic. Damascus remains the city where life is most difficult, majorly because of Syria’s continuing civil war. 

According to the report, the poorest ranking cities are struggling with growing civil unrest and military conflicts a major reason for being in the top ten. While most parts of the country are besieged by military activities and civil unrest, Lagos seems to be relatively calmer this year. The last time there was major unrest in Lagos was during the End Sars protest in October, and we are predicting another unrest on June 12, this is following the planned protest all over Nigeria with the #BuhariMustGo

About the ranking

“The concept of liveability is simple: it assesses which locations around the world provide the best and worst living conditions. Assessing liveability has a broad range of uses, from benchmarking perceptions of development levels to assigning a hardship allowance as part of expatriate relocation packages. City officials and urban policymakers can use the rankings to benchmark target cities against the top-ranked cities. The ratings can help them to understand the gap between target cities and the best-ranked cities across different categories. This, in turn, should help to frame policies and target investors.” EIU