dispensation, as not a few critics are united in remarking that what we are witnessing in
the present form may be new but it may not be too different from the polarizations of the
past through which socio-economic, political and cultural dynamics were determined. For
the formerly colonized countries of the Third World especially, the struggle in the global
domain is that of how to influence the reconfiguration of the world structure in a manner
that will change the old order through which they were kept in subordination. Therefore,
the connectivity opportunity that globalization provides may be one way by which the
reconfiguration of the world structure can be negotiated. Nevertheless, events have
proven that on the contrary Third World countries especially those of Africa may still
have longer periods to fight subordination than they initially conceived of it. For,
whatever globalization claims to offer as a relief from imperialism, particularly of a
western capitalist hue, may just be yet another guise to moderate and consolidate the
centuries-long history of imperialism.^51 But just as past histories of imperialism have
recorded local collaborators, the present exclusion and subordination of cities, that is,
African cities in the global scheme of things cannot be entirely blamed on imperial
advances from the West.
Therefore, it requires a dispassionate criticism of the condition of African cities in order
to get to explore their vulnerability in the age of globalization. According to Ranka
Primorac (2008:1), in spite of the vibrancy and creativity of African cities, we cannot
ignore the unpalatable side of the African city experiences in recent decades:
For decades now, large numbers of African residents have had to contend with urban living
marked by decaying infrastructures and long-term dearth of formal employment, as well as
increased levels of violence, disease, political oppression and incursion of external economic
and political interests.The remark above does much to capture the experience of the city of Lagos as portrayed
in Ofeimun’s London Letter and the Niger Delta urbanscapes as represented in Ojaide’s
When it no Longer Matters where you Live. To begin with, Lagos, especially the with
51
For, as Claude Meillassoux (1991:323) puts it, “Freedom is won little by little through the exploitation of
the interstices created by contradictions in every social system which force the exploiters to give in so that
they themselves can survive. Each conquest is not sheer victory: it can also be an adjustment necessary to
the perpetuation of the mode of exploitation.”