(Re)inventing development: China, infrastructure, sustainability and special economic zones in Nigeria

Abstract

This article interrogates the introduction of special economic zones (SEZs) in Nigeria with an emphasis on the establishment of the Lekki free trade zone (FTZ) in May 2006 by the Lagos State government in partnership with a Chinese consortium, and of the Ogun-Guandong FTZ in Igbesa, Ogun State by the Ogun State government. The aim of the Lekki FTZ, Ogun-Guandong FTZ and other SEZs is to transform Lagos and Ogun states into the manufacturing hub of West Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. These economic zones in Nigeria encompass oil and gas, manufacturing, retail, real estate, and other ancillary companies. Based on interviews and participant observations, this article investigates how differing notions of land ownership circulate within communities affected by the FTZs. I ask how it is that indigenous populations, who fear displacement from their living spaces and socio-economic livelihoods, have begun to utilize claims to ancestral land ownership as symbolic expressions of cultural meanings and belonging that run counter to the property regimes associated with the FTZ project. How does the production of such cultural meanings intersect with the claims and counter-claims of indigeneity, communal ownership, and belonging to a space with a rich history that predates the postcolonial state and the inheritors of state power in Lagos? How is it that FTZs, framed as infrastructure projects designed to make life better for the people, end up displacing populations? In drawing out the connections between large-scale development and displacement, this article examines how communities employ both the tangible and intangible past to show how contestations over land ownership are reshaping new forms of community history and culture.

RETRACTED ARTICLE: A Multilevel Fuzzy Evaluation of Cross-Border E-Commerce Profitability Model

“…As the CBEC has grown, issues with user payment methods, product after-sales support, customs quarantine, and import and export duties have all gradually emerged. However, as free trade zones have developed over time, each of these issues has been resolved one at a time [2].…”

Deconstructing the Metanarratives of China’s Engagement with the African Continent: African Agency and Competing Narratives

“…A case in point is China’s SEZ in Nigeria, the Ogun-Guangdong Free Trade Zone (OGFTZ). Adunbi (2019, p. 672) notes that, on visiting the OGFTZ in 2016, one of the Nigerian staff stated concerningly that ‘this place is not Nigeria’. However, this statement appeared to Adunbi not in the optimistic sense relating to a circumvention of the government’s red tape, but worryingly in the pessimistic colonial sense.…”

“…Adunbi (2019, p. 674) further describes that the creation of a ‘state within the state’ took place in the OGFTZ and was characterised by several factors, such as the entire staff was described as ‘expatriates’, and the ‘Chinese expatriates’ dominated the ‘Nigerian expatriates’, with both housed in distinctly unequal accommodation. Furthermore, with considerably reduced Nigerian regulations and peculiarities such as Chinese police commanders in the OGFTZ, this only further represented the exploitative colonial structures.…”

How Is China Impacting African Cities?

“…In some cases like the Lekki Free Trade Zone in Lagos, Nigeria, African governments adopt Chinese-inspired Special Economic Zones as a way to bypass existing rules and procedures but also strengthen links with the region. But some populations have experienced devastating consequences, like the loss of ancestral practices and displacement from their communities (Adunbi, 2019). As Adunbi and Butt (2019) summed up: ‘Development infrastructures [modeled after the Chinese experience] can thus serve to erase local people's histories and can result in violent contestations’.…”

“…While China is helping fill the infrastructure gap, local communities often experience it on the ground as neocolonialism and meet it with resentment and resistance (Adunbi, 2019). They are sometimes displaced and lose homes.…”