Nigeria's Urban Heritage: In Conversation with Dr Taibat Lawanson

Brought to you by the combined voices of the African Cities Research Consortium and the Global Urban Futures and Environment Policy and Planning research groups, this episode features Dr Taibat Lawanson. 

Taibat is an associate professor of urban planning at the University of Lagos and a Leverhulme Professor at the University of Liverpool. In this episode, she explores the past and the future of urban spaces and how essential heritage is to urban planning. 

Lean more about Taibat Lawanson here. 

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Intro music Anna Banana by Eaters

Transcript

Alice Sverdlik [00:00:24] Thank you everyone for being with us today. My name is Alice Svardlik and I'm a lecturer in urban development planning here at Manchester. And it's my huge pleasure to introduce Dr. Taibat Lawanson who's joining us from the University of Liverpool and University of Lagos where she's an associate professor of urban planning at Lagos and a Leverhulme professor at the University of Liverpool. She holds a PhD in urban planning and has a long-term focus on inclusive development and with a focus including social justice, environmental justice, and also the built environment. She's leading up a new research initiative at Liverpool that we'll hear more about today. And we're very lucky to have her with us. So I just want to say a huge thank you to her. 

Taibat Lawanson [00:01:05] So I'm just going to speak briefly about two issues that usually run on different tangentials, the past and the future. So looking at thinking of urban futures and how and the place of heritage and looking at what is being done regarding this in Nigeria. I'm an urban planner by training and in this talk, I'll be speaking from an urban planning perspective that's in some way... Urban planning in Nigeria is, the training for urban planners in Nigeria, is quite technical. And so we have a very special understanding of how the city should be. We're very focused on lines and structure and things being as they ought to be and as we designed them to be. And we are not given a lot of training on the intangible issues or the humane issues, the social issues and really the things that make cities worth what they really are. And knowing that town planning is a silver bullet to addressing some of the key challenges that we face today, it's important that we really start thinking about the role of cities in shaping identity. And when we talk about the rule of cities in shaping the identity from personal identity of people to the unique attributes of what, of how cities are made or remade. And looking at how cities that laid out and some of the considerations to why certain land uses are placed where or the kind of value that is given to certain parts of the city and others, the role of heritage is often under considered I will say. 

Taibat Lawanson [00:03:23] So today I'll be speaking on how can we preserve urban heritage as we look to the future of Nigerian cities. Urban development in Nigeria is going through some transition particularly since we moved to an urban demography and over 50 percent of the Nigerian population is now resident in urban areas so there is an urban focus to our development and there is more attention being placed by various governments on the urban space and the cultural value of urbanisation globally. The links between culture and sustainable urban development are being highlighted. SDG 11 talks about the protection and safeguarding of cultural and natural heritage, and the new urban agenda also acknowledges the important role of culture as a driver of sustainable urbanisation. Target 11 of Goal 14 talks about strengthening efforts to protect and safeguard cultural and natural heritage. But here, it doesn't talk about built environment heritage, which is heritage that is most at risk in urban areas. 

Taibat Lawanson [00:04:55] Then what is heritage? It's our legacy from the past, to what we live with today, and what we pass on to future generations, according to the World Heritage Council. Apart from the heritage from the past, it is also something that is being produced by the day. And then there are different contexts or dimensions to heritage, natural heritage, which is geographic features, physiological formations and the like, and then you have built heritage, which is immovable objects, traditional architecture, archaeological sites, buildings, monuments, museums, graves, shrines, sacred places. And then you also have cultural heritage, which includes artefacts, monuments, practices, symbolic aesthetic or things that have some scientific or social significance. Heritage can also be either tangible or intangible, tangible in that it can be felt and intangible in that is embedded into cultural identity and how we become people or ethnic people or groups, the social practices that really make us who we are. And while in the context of sustainable development, we see that heritage helps us to understand the past and to also determine the trend of the future. And if we layer it with sustainable development then we start to think about policies and practices that help to shape cities and help to shape the value of cities and how these policies and programmes also have significance when thinking about economic, social, or environmental sustainability. 

Taibat Lawanson [00:07:11] The social value of urbanisation will only be realised alongside the intangible value of urbanisation, and this intangible value leans more on the social practices and the things that make cities the places they are. And when we think about cities as public spaces, we also see them as icons and symbols as cultural artefacts, as places with physical artefacts, built environments, historic landmarks, and things like that. There are certain landmarks we see and we know that we're talking about a particular city or place. And the cities are places that are heterogeneous, but many of our cities also start from somewhere, meaning that a city like Lagos, for example, is heterogeneous. It attracts over 26 million people, but they are also particular people who are indigenous to the city and their culture and their traditions are important and contribute to making Lagos the city that it is. Hence, it's important for us to recognise cultural diversity in the context of urbanisation, but it's also important to harness the unique characteristics that the heritage of these cities bring to the table when thinking about social sustainability, when thinking about urban identity. and when thinking about how people see themselves and their legacies. And urban planning can contribute to this. Usually, with urban planning, often forecasting the future, sometimes we are complicit in erasing the past. And so there is a measure of intentionality that is required by urban planners when thinking the future, when thinking about public space management, when thinking the preservation and conservation of identities, memories and traditions, particularly those that are embedded in tangible heritage. 

Taibat Lawanson [00:09:37] So Nigeria and the interface of her urban trajectory and heritage, we know that Nigeria has significant heritage assets that cut across the nation in cities and towns and in more hinterland places. The full extent of Nigeria's heritage assets are unknown because many are undocumented and we see that the urban growth has put heritage at risk, particularly in the urban areas and the weak policies also threaten some of these already identified places of cultural value. What we see is that the urban development trajectories and the aspiration of Nigeria's urban futures are usually responding to globalising identities of the city or globalising imaginations of what a city ought to be and adapting to city indicators that are world-class or smart or futuristic and things like that. And so for many governments, the thinking of what the future of the city will be will be a city of skyscrapers that is likened similar to places such as Dubai and Singapore without realising that the way the people in those cities live their lives is perhaps aligned to the way they are built environment and their contemporary heritage is being developed. And that's why even though they are these universal, you know, indicators and thinking around what a city ought to be, the cultural heritage, the social dimensions, really are the underpinnings of what cities and really are. Otherwise, it will just be an amalgam of people, an amalgam of buildings going around in a lagoistic fashion. 

Taibat Lawanson [00:11:59] So when we look at how to think about sustainable urbanisation through a heritage lens, there are certain questions that come to play. Who determines the significance of a monument, especially when we have so many? How is heritage showcased to the public? How do we present it as something of value? Especially when you're looking at things like belief systems and the overarching overlay of the Abrahamic religions, for example, that have been introduced into our societies. What policies ensure long-term protections? And when we think about the policies, where do the policies come from? Are they tourism development policies? Are they town planning policies? Are they heritage policies? And as the case of Lagos states, do they fall under the ministry of special duties? And then who holds responsibility for heritage site? Where you think about places like palaces, religious places, who holds responsibility, and how are these kinds of places taken care of? There are certain governance principles that one should consider when thinking about sustainable heritage development. What I've done is to look at the heritage environment in Nigeria, and how it aligns with these five principles. The principle of legitimacy and voice, strategic direction, performance, responsibility, and justice. How heritage is embedded in city development plans, the kinds of investments that are put in place for heritage, for urban heritage, especially the kinds of institutional capacities that are deployed and who is monitoring, evaluating and ensuring that heritage is being protected or conserved. And finally, how local communities, host communities participate in the heritage management sector. 

Taibat Lawanson [00:14:28] The question is, how well are we doing on the pathway to achieving sustainable heritage management in Nigeria? With regards to legitimacy and voice, the Nigerian Urban and Regional Planning Acts of 1992 address the issue of historic buildings and sites and puts in place recommendations for how they should be managed. However, in the domestication of that law, no state planning edict has heritage embedded in the domestication of the planning law. The National Commission for Museums and Monuments also empowers, and the Act of 1979 empowers, the National Commission to declare antiquities including built environment sites. But when it declares those sites, those sites are meant to be ratified by the National Assembly and gazetted. Then they can have legal protection. And since 1979, when the commission was set up, only 65 national monuments have been declared. 108 have been proposed since the early 2000s, but they are still awaiting National Assembly approval. And then the issue is... Beyond declaring those sites, who has responsibility for taking care of them and where will budget be sent, is a key issue. 

Taibat Lawanson [00:16:13] The Lagos State Government did a state heritage protection law in 2011 and this heritage protection law is domiciled in the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and it's essentially similar to the one for the Commission of Museums and Monuments, and empowers the declaration of places of historic significance and lists them as grade 1, 2, or 3, to determine the kinds of care maintenance and changes that can be done, and it requires governor's approval. But since 2011, So no new site has been listed on that law. And when thinking about the strategic direction, we see that these laws exists, but there's weak implementation. And sometimes the way the law is articulated also leaves a lot of room for confusion as to who takes responsibility and what can be done. 

Taibat Lawanson [00:17:28] Now, a strategic direction regarding more intentional action plans for development of the heritage sector at the national level. We have a Nigerian National Tourism Development Master Plan, but that master plan is primarily focused on the economic benefits of people visiting some of these heritage sites, and not necessarily on how the heritage assets themselves can be managed or well maintained. And then there is the NCMM strategic roadmap that is currently in the works on developing a national framework for monument preservation. This one pays a little more attention to built environment heritage, but it's still at a planning stage. And then we have the Lagos state government that has, and the Edo state government, two state governments that have developed comprehensive heritage tourism development plans, actually. The one for Lagos considers heritage to be an asset, while heritage tourism is the underlying thinking behind that of Edo State. In Ekiti State last year, The government flagged off the development of a heritage integrated tourism strategy that is supported by, I think it's UNESCO. 

Taibat Lawanson [00:19:08] So with regards to performance of the sector, Nigeria has two UNESCO sites, listed sites, the Osun-Osogbo Grove and the Sukur Cultural Landscape. Fourteen others have been pending listing since 1995, and even those that have been listed are running the risk of delisting largely due to poor commitment to their maintenance as well as underfunding. We see that there is low public awareness of these heritage sites, and most of those who visit museums, for example, expatriates, researchers and students on school tours. In fact, in 2018, there were 42,000 museum visitors across all the, I think Nigeria has about 53 museums across the nation. And we had 3.1 million viewers to the cinema in the same period. Now, a visit to the museum cost 200 naira. And the average movie you'll pay at least, for the cheapest tickets, you'll be paying 1,500, 1,600 without popcorn. So you can imagine the kinds of investments, the kind of revenue that is being generated. And then there are bureaucratic gaps in the heritage ecosystem. For example, in the last two years, we've had Ministry of Culture and Tourism. We've had a Ministry Of Culture separate from the Ministry of Tourism and another Ministry of National orientation and then a Tourism Development Agency that is a standalone agency and the four of them at the national level were contending against each other as to who has superior mandate about, you know, heritage and tourism. And then when thinking about development at the urban scale, oftentimes heritage is sacrificed for urban infrastructure or urban development projects. I recall there's a swimming pool in Lagos Island called the JK Randall swimming pool. It was bequeathed to the city government by a family to teach young people in the community how to swim. My father learned how to swim at that pool. He's 86 years old. And about six years ago, that pool was demolished to build, at the point it had been given out to a developer and with public outcry from the community, it has then now been converted to a museum of memory that is still not open to the public. So now children in Lagos Island have to go all the way to the national stadium to get affordable swimming lessons. And so those kinds of things are some of the things that we have to deal with when heritage assets are are located in places of high land value. They also lack a skilled manpower to manage and maintain heritage assets. For example, in planning schools in Nigeria, heritage is not taught. Maybe as a topic in tourism planning in the fourth year. In architecture, it's an elective in the final year. And so we don't have the professionals who are skilled, who have the technical skills to do the work of heritage management. Now, when we think about responsibility, we know that heritage management is not prioritised in urban and cultural management across the country. And that heritage sites are often at risk during planning reforms in the city. And a lot of the urban regeneration action strips away the identity of a people, and this has been done in the name of urban planning. I give you an example. We have a co-Atlantic city on Victoria Island that is one of our aspirational urban development structures and the bar beach, which is a natural heritage asset and a commonwealth of the people of Lagos has now become a private playground of the people who will live in a co-atlantic city. And so while that urban regeneration project is termed to be a success and a climate solution, it has actually robbed the entire city of access to that common wealth. And then also in times of conflict, heritage assets are also not well protected. We lost a lot of archival materials when the Lagos High Court was burnt down during the End SARS riot of 2021. The palace of the Oba of Lagos was also attacked. And during the Boko Haram insurgency, the UNESCO-listed Suku cultural landscape was destroyed. And restoration efforts are currently ongoing, but largely driven by volunteers and international support. 

Taibat Lawanson [00:25:11] Heritage can be a tool for social justice when we think about local and indigenous knowledge systems, when local communities are recognised, and indigenous knowledge system is leveraged for local economic development, strengthening capacities and capabilities. But the fact that a lot of our development plans and approaches essentially embrace Westernised models without thinking about the impact on local communities and local heritage assets, we have lost a lot of assets, particularly the intangible ones, and this is despite Nigeria being a signatory to the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People. and the Nigerian constitution also protecting the rights of indigenous people. Within the country, we've seen things like the development of the capital city in Abuja, resulting in the first eviction of local indigenous communities. Compensation still not being paid, and this is 40 odd years after the federal government has moved to abuja, there are still agitations by the indigenous people of Abuja for their social and economic rights. With that being said, there have been some bright sparks along the line. We have I'd say time in the early 2000s, a lot of the streets in Ikuin were renamed from colonial authorities to prominent Lagos names and over the last three years they have been and celebrations or cultural activities at the state level. 

Taibat Lawanson [00:27:09] But there are also a lot of controversies around the claims and counterclaims to heritage. For example, currently we see the situation with the Benin bronzes and the development of a caravage museum that the palace of the Obo of Benin has pushed back again, saying that those bronzes belong In the palace. The state government, however, thinks or thought that the bronzes were public assets and should be on display, you know, for the public to see and to attract revenue to the state. And in light of that, we also see Tafawa Balewa Square, where Nigeria's independence was declared in 1960 and it's a listed site but it's owned by the federal government, and sometime in 2022 there was a concessioning of the place and the first thing the concessionaire did was to pull down the gates and there was different responses from the public. While one person said this place should be torn down and turned into high-rise middle class housing it takes up too much space we who used to house several people who work on the island project to go a long way to reducing Lagos traffic. An indigen said, built heritage is as much the entitlement of the people as oral history, written documentation, folklore, traditions, and culture. And the preservation of history in all its ramification defines us and, more importantly, sets the path for future generations. So how can we tell our children about the history of Nigeria. where we can't even point to the location where that declaration was made, simply because a concessionaire felt the gates were not convenient. 

Taibat Lawanson [00:29:15] And so the question is, how do we conciliate the indigenous right to protect their heritage and the quest to leverage such assets for broader economic development? It's important that as cities grow... we know that culture will be instrumental to the shift, you know, in the shift to the future. And that when we recognise the cultural diversity and the cultural value of places and people in those places, it helps us to move towards a more humane, inclusive future. And how can we start to think about using heritage assets, assets from the past for now so that they are able to you know have value in in how we live our lives now. Just like the statement talked about how Tafawa Balewa Square should be you know converted to housing perhaps not anything as drastic as that, but there are buildings in Lagos that have been abandoned like the independence building that could easily be converted or the federal secretariat's complex that could be easily be changed. So how do we implement those kinds of transitions where the heritage asset is still useful and it still helps us to have a sense of belonging to our roots. And then the need for the institutional frameworks and reforms that are required to support heritage preservation in 21st century Nigeria. And that's why my provocation really is for us to perhaps start thinking about heritage in the urban discourse. Heritage is not something that belongs to the rural. And with... we're in an urban age and so the heritage assets in the urban space will continually be at risk and so it's important for us to think about it through perhaps documenting the ones that are gone or the ones are about to go and thinking about urban regeneration through a heritage lens, future proofing without erasing the past and then to start thinking about training those who will do this work in a sustainable manner and engaging the community. But more importantly, how do we catalyse political will? How do we get government commitments to support, to reform the laws, to provide funding and to prioritise the protection of built cultural and natural heritage? So this work is being done under the Architectural Heritage and Urbanism of West Africa Research Centre. Over the next four and a half years, I'm going to be leading the African Urbanism and Coastal Heritage Lab that is looking at how issues of climate change and globalisation affect built and cultural heritage in West African cities. and these kinds of reflections are some of the things that we're going to be doing. Just thinking about the future of West Africa and other port cities and how heritage can be preserved while we're looking to better urban futures. Thank you. 

Alice Sverdlik [00:33:19] Just to say thank you to Taibat for joining. I should have mentioned this event was brought to us by the combined voices of the African Cities Research Consortium and two research groups at Global Urban Futures and the environment policy and planning. So thank you to all of us.