Lagos, unbound tempest beneath your feet

We Built This City is a limited series of photo essays by The Continent on African cities. This week, we are in Lagos with Victor Adewale.

Jun 17, 2025

Every story you have heard about Lagos is true. Every story you have not yet heard about Lagos is also true. You can live here all your life but if the city isn’t surprising you every day, then it is shocking you instead.

Lagos is magic.

Each morning, the city redraws its own map: the route travelled yesterday is blocked today by a container that fell off a truck at midnight. Fate masquerades as misfortune: if your wallet disappears, be grateful – someone else had their genitals stolen by a stranger yesterday. Is that so crazy? What makes you think it isn’t true? Lagos is a fiction we write together. Or perhaps it is writing us.

Lagos is resilience.

Every day is a survival story. In a neighbourhood that hasn’t had electricity for three months, kids dance their hearts out at a party powered by a generator, or play table tennis in a tournament lit with flashlights.

In neighbourhoods like Oworo, young people neglected by higher powers engage in performance art to keep their dreams alive, to push against the limits imposed upon them by the circumstances that shape their world.

Lagos is difficult.

If you are burdened by expectations of calm routine, if your resolve is too sorely tested by finding out that okadas have been banned or are on strike on the morning of your job interview, if you find yourself ill at ease on the edge of chaos – maybe this city is not for you?

Lagos is a city of dreams.

It’s for those who see in the city a blank canvas, calling out: “What do you want to paint on me today? In colours bright or dark?”

If you come, will you stay?

Will you prey?

Will you try to wrest our city from us, like you did to those in Tarkwa Bay?

Perhaps you imagine that you will shape my city, my Lagos? My friend, Lagos will shape you.