Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, is the second worst city to live in out of 172 cities worldwide, a new report shows.
The revelation is according to economic intelligence unit (EIU) in its 2022 ranking of the world’s most liveable cities. The city was ranked 171st out of 172 countries ranked by the EIU.
With a relatively low score of 32.2 percent, Lagos was just slightly above Syria’s war-torn capital Damascus and one place behind Tripoli in Libya. Both cities are hotbeds of wars, conflicts and terrorism.
The other cities in the bottom 10 are Karachi, the largest city in Pakistan, and Algiers in Algeria. Others are Port Moresby, Dhaka, Harare, Doula and Tehran, the capital of Iran.
“As in previous surveys, living conditions remain the worst in the lowest ten cities,” the report said, adding that “wars, conflicts and terrorism are the biggest factors weighing on the top ten cities. lowest ranked cities, of which seven are from the Middle East. and Africa.”
The report also noted that Austria’s capital Vienna is the world’s most liveable city, with Copenhagen, Calgary, Zurich and Vancouver rounding out the top five. The Austrian city regained the top position with a score of 99.9%, as in the pre-pandemic years of 2018 and 2019, scoring high on all five metrics: education, healthcare, culture and environment, stability and infrastructure.
“The top ten cities are also among those with few covid restrictions. Shops, restaurants and museums have reopened, as have schools, and hospitalization caused by the pandemic has decreased, leading to less stress on health care resources and services, and even the requirement to wear masks now. it is not in force in most situations,” the report says. .
Lagos scores low in all categories
Lagos scored very low on all five metrics used to assess a person’s lifestyle,
On the stability metric, Lagos scored 20 percent, the same point as Damascus.
In the health care category, the city scored 20.8 percent, the same point it scored last year.
In culture and environment, Lagos finished with 44.9 percent, while in education, the city scored 25 percent.
The former Nigerian capital kept 46.4 percent for the infrastructure category.
same old record
For the past five years, Lagos’ position has remained largely at the bottom of the EIU’s livability rankings.
In 2021Nigeria’s largest city was ranked as the second worst city to live in after Damascus.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the EIU did not publish a habitability rating in 2020.
Nevertheless, in 2019Lagos was once again the least habitable city in the world after Damascus.
In 2018, Nigeria’s commercial powerhouse became the third worst city to live in out of 140 cities worldwide.
In 2017Lagos fell back to the second worst liveable city.
Lagos is the only Nigerian city included in the ranking, making it difficult to determine how other Nigerian cities would have ranked.
The EIU 2022 report
The EIU Livability Rating and Summary quantify the challenges that could present themselves to a person’s lifestyle in 173 cities around the world. Each city is assigned a score for more than 30 qualitative and quantitative factors in five broad categories: stability, health care, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure.
“Each factor in a city is rated as acceptable, tolerable, uncomfortable, undesirable, or intolerable. For qualitative indicators, a rating is given based on the judgment of our team of expert analysts and city partners. For quantitative indicators, a score is calculated based on the relative performance of a series of external data points.
“The scores are then compiled and weighted to provide a score in the range of 1 to 100, where 1 is considered intolerable and 100 is considered ideal. The livability rating is provided as an overall score and as a score for each category,” the report says.
On a larger scale, the index showed that the global average habitability score has recovered. The average is now 73.6 percent (of 100), up from 69.1 percent a year ago. However, this is still lower than the average of 75.9 reported before the pandemic.
“Of our five categories, the biggest improvements over the past year have been in culture and environment, education and healthcare, all of which were severely affected by the closures,” the report says.
Infrastructure scores remain stable overall, while stability has deteriorated, due in large part to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it added.
In the new ranking, Russia’s capital Moscow saw its liveability ranking drop by 15 places, while St. Petersburg fell by 13 places.
“Both cities see falling scores due to increased instability, censorship, the imposition of Western sanctions, and companies withdrawing operations from the country,” the report says.
Other cities in eastern Europe, such as Warsaw (Poland) and Budapest (Hungary), also saw their stability scores drop amid rising diplomatic tensions, the EIU said.
“The war in Ukraine will remain a security threat for at least the next year. The EIU expects the active phase of the war to continue through 2022 before giving way to more entrenched hostility. Even without escalation, the conflict will continue to fuel global inflation and hold back economic growth.
“The increase in world prices for raw materials, in particular energy and food, will affect the livability of many cities in the coming months and could cause conflicts in some. Even when stability is not threatened, the cost-of-living crisis will curb investment in infrastructure, health care, and education, as well as consumer spending that supports cultural life,” the report concluded.