Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial nerve centre,
is the third worst city to live in the world, a new report carried out by The
Economist Intelligence Unit has revealed. According to the report on
Liveability, which assesses locations around the world that provide the best or
the worst living conditions, Lagos placed 138th out of the 140 cities surveyed.
Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, is the overall worst
city while Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea came second in the chart of the
worst cities to live in the world.
Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire placed 131st; Tehran, Iran
came 132; Douala, Cameroon is the 133rd; Tripoli, Libya placed 134th; Karachi,
Pakistan came 135th; Algiers, Algeria is 136th while Harare in Zimbabwe placed
137th in the category of the worst cities in the world.
Ironically, Africa was given prime place in the
category of worst cities to live as six out of 10 worst cities are on the continent.
According to the survey, Melbourne, Australia tops the list of the best cities
to live in, while Vienna, Austria, is the second best city.
Three Canadian cities Vancouver, Toronto, and Calgary –
are third, fourth and fifth best cities to live in. Again, Adelaide and Sydney,
both Australian cities placed sixth and seventh liveable places in the world.
Helsinki, Finland is eighth; Perth, Australia and
Auckland, New Zealand are the ninth and 10th best places to live.
No African cities feature among the best 10 cities to
live in the world. Every city in the survey is assigned a rating of relative
comfort for over 30 qualitative and quantitative factors across five broad
categories: stability; healthcare; culture and environment; education; and
infrastructure.
Each factor in a city is rated as acceptable,
tolerable, uncomfortable, undesirable or intolerable. In terms of stability,
Lagos scores 25 per cent; 33.3 per cent in healthcare, 52.3 per cent in culture
and environment and 48.2 per cent in infrastructure.
In the survey, Lagos has overall rating of 39.0 per
cent. The ideal is 100.
In the healthcare category, availability of private
healthcare, quality of private healthcare, availability of public healthcare,
quality of public healthcare and availability of over-thecounter drugs were
used as the criteria.
In culture and environment category, the following:
humidity/temperature rating, discomfort of climate to travellers, level of
corruption, social or religious restrictions, level of censorship, sporting
availability, cultural availability, food and drink, consumer goods and services
are used as the indices.
In the survey, availability of private education,
quality of private education and public education are used in the education
category.
In infrastructure where Lagos was scored 48.2 rating,
indices such as quality of road network, quality of public transport, quality
of international links, availability of good quality housing, quality of energy
provision, quality of water provision, and quality of telecommunications were
used.
“Conflict is responsible for many of the lowest scores. This
is not only because stability indicators have the highest single scores, but
also because factors defining stability spread to have an adverse effect on
other categories. For example, the threat of armed conflict will not just cause
disruption in its own right, it will also damage infrastructure, overburden
hospitals, and undermine the availability of goods, services and recreational
activities. Africa (North and Sub-Saharan) and Asia account for all 13 cities,
with violence, whether through crime, civil insurgency, terrorism or war,
playing a strong role,” the report stated.