‘ Crony planning ’: limits to the public-private partnership model in urban marketplace modernization in Lagos, Nigeria

Recent state-led urban reform policies in Lagos, Nigeria, have consistently offered traditional marketplaces to private investors via public-private partnership (PPP) for ultra-modernization. This practice has increased recently and involves diverse private actors, non-state authorities, and government agents. This article contributes to the literature on the history of urban (re)development politics by examining the interrelated questions: how have the governance processes in Lagos’ traditional marketplaces evolved, and what are the historical outcomes of these PPPs as a new planning governance mechanism and the key limitations in their implementation? Relying on archival studies, interview data, and site observations of marketplaces across metropolitan Lagos, this study explores state-led urban renewal practices over the last three and a half decades. The findings indicate that while there is no scarcity of robust legal and institutional frameworks for PPP in Lagos, many contracted private developers of these marketplaces show strong political connections, while many stakeholders think some developers were awarded these projects despite lacking the requisite financing and technical capacities. This article, therefore, questions the selection and contracting processes, which are usually shrouded in secrecy, to highlight how the idea of ‘crony planning’ operates to expose the limits of the PPP processes in urban infrastructure development.