This is how disaster works in a city like Lagos: unequally, unpredictably, but always revealing the invisible infrastructure of inequality that shapes who can escape and who must endure. A true island.

Yet the project proceeded with the kind of bureaucratic momentum that treats environmental impact as an afterthought rather than a primary consideration

Change requires a kind of organised, sustained pressure. It requires citizens who refuse to accept dysfunction as normal and officials who understand their role as serving public welfare rather than private interests.

This is what happens when public goods are managed as private assets. The common resources that should protect everyone - drainage systems, emergency services, transportation networks - become tools for generating revenue rather than providing safety.

The mockery isn't just cruel; it's strategically stupid . It distracts attention from the real culprit - governmental decisions that have made flooding inevitable across wider and wider swaths of Lagos State. While people waste energy laughing at flood victims, the water spreads, the problems multiply, and the underlying causes remain unaddressed.

we're all vulnerable to the same systemic failures, all dependent on the same inadequate infrastructure, all subject to the same governmental negligence.

These weren't random accidents but predictable outcomes of systemic underinvestment in public safety . Fire safety systems that don't work. Drainage systems that can't handle seasonal rain. Emergency response capabilities that can't reach people in crisis. Each disaster exposed the same underlying reality: a city of over twenty million people being... See more

The same infrastructure collapse that creates flooding also eliminates the social and economic systems that usually provide some measure of security through predictability and community presence.

The question is whether Lagos residents will demand governance systems capable of long-term planning, environmental protection, and genuine accountability to community welfare.