Lagos State has been ranked 139 out of 140 in the list of most liveable cities in the world in the first quarter of 2021. This makes Lagos the second-worst city to live in the world today.
According to the data, Lagos is only next to Damascus, Syria as the worst city to live in the world, and worse than Algiers (Algeria) and Tripoli (Libya).
The data is compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit (The EIU), the research and analysis division of The Economist Group, the sister company to The Economist newspaper.
The data is based on a survey collected between February 22nd to March 21st, 2021, and looked at issues such as border closures, ability to handle health crisis, and roll out of vaccinations. To rank the cities, the report focuses on five broad categories: stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure. Every city is assigned a rating for relative comfort for over 30 qualitative and quantitative factors across the categories.
Auckland, in New Zealand, topped the list of The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Liveability rankings, based on the city’s ability to contain the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic faster and thus lift restrictions earlier, unlike others around the world.
In addition, six of the top ten cities in the March 2021 survey are in New Zealand or Australia, where tight border controls have allowed residents to live relatively normal lives.
According to the report, the poorest ranking cities are struggling with growing civil unrest and military conflicts a major reason for being in the top ten.
“These continue to score poorly across the five categories. A consistently low stability score, owing to ongoing civil unrest and military conflicts, is the reason behind most of these cities featuring in the bottom ten. However, conditions have deteriorated even further as a result of Covid-19—particularly for healthcare.”
While most parts of the country are besieged by military activities and civil unrest, Lagos seems to be relatively calmer this year. The last time there was major unrest in Lagos was during the End Sars protest in October.
About the ranking
“The concept of liveability is simple: it assesses which locations around the world provide the best and worst living conditions. Assessing liveability has a broad range of uses, from benchmarking perceptions of development levels to assigning a hardship allowance as part of expatriate relocation packages. City officials and urban policymakers can use the rankings to benchmark target cities against the top-ranked cities. The ratings can help them to understand the gap between target cities and the best-ranked cities across different categories. This in turn should help to frame policies and target investors.” EIU
I downloaded the report and read it it and part of it doesn’t make sense. It assess the effects and risks the pandemic posed health wise and the efficiency at which the vaccines were rolled out.
As someone who lives in Lagos I’ll say this, you were safest in subsaharan Africa from Feb 2020 till Present day when you consider the covid figures of the west and now Asia. There was a time travelling to New York city, London, Paris, Madrid or even Barcelona was a death sentence. We watched on TV as people in the developed west scrambled for toilet paper. My daughter who lives in Oxford complained about the inabily to buy everyday items because of rationing.
I’m not surprised they will manipulate the truth to present themselves as superior.
After hoarding all the vaccines they are playing daft by wondering why African countries were slow to roll out…. Maybe because we weren’t dying like fish. The said there would be bodies in the streets and that didn’t happen. And llnof this they wrote from their office chair after googling a few sites….
If you ask them to investigate their old people’s homes they will tell you we are working on it ……
I had to give them my details to register and download the report. I guess now they will want to sell me more flawed white privilege views.
That’s an incorrect report about Lagos. Could be correct for some part of Nigeria but definitely it Lagos. The data may have assumed Lagos as Nigeria.
Thanks ve been to list of the cities listed
Lagos is a better place to live than any of the cities listed.
Another case of statistical lies and deceptions.
A case of calling the dog a bad name in other to kill it.No doubt that we are having our challenges,our Lagos can never be the worst city to live in judging from all objective and unbiased perspectives.
Check the infrastructure criterion we are definitely better than most assumed supposedly better cities.
Going by the parameters used it suffix to say the evaluation and eventual result was completely untrue. Lagos is safer than most of the cities ranked above it.
This honestly baffles me.