A REMEDY TO INFRASTRUCTURAL CHALLENGES VIA RENEWAL PROGRAMME, A CASE STUDY OF LAGOS MEGA CITY

Background of the study: Lagos now has a population of more than 15 million people. The United Nations grants megacity classification to cities with populations of 10 million or more. Building and preserving a model megacity has significant obstacles. It might be difficult to provide enough infrastructure and other necessary to meet the demands of over 15 million people (Ayeni, 2018). According to a report by Lagos Energy City (2017), officials and population scientists believed that by 2025, the population of the metropolis and adjacent towns, particularly in the Ogun State axis, would have risen to 30 million. Housing, infrastructure, and transportation are among the most pressing issues, particularly in the state's more than ten local government areas (LGAs), excluding local council development zones (LCDAs). Furthermore, legendary traffic congestion, suffocating pollution, insufficient supply of clean water, instability, and the lack or inadequacy of people's social and economic demands offer further obstacles. Apart from the government's efforts through various urban renewal programmes, the uncontrolled influx of people from virtually every state in Nigeria, including neighbouring countries such as Benin Republic, Togo, Ghana, and others, is raising concerns that the next few years will present a daunting task for the authority (Brebbia, Mander & Tiezzi 2020). It has been discovered that septics are fed directly into the drain in several Lagos homes. As a result, the government is pushed to invest extensively in environmental protection through urban redevelopment initiatives in order to prevent environmental misuse and its effects. People travel from rural to cities with little grasp of the realities on the ground. Here, culture comes into play, such as open defecation as practised in the village, public clothing distribution, and cooking exercise in any open space, among other things that frustrate the state government's efforts to improve the city through urban redevelopment initiatives. Officials recognise that planned urban regeneration is a significant difficulty in a developing model metropolis like Lagos (Isichei 2019).