NEO-PENTECOSTAL URBAN INFRASTRUCTURES IN LAGOS, NIGERIA: Ontology, Politics, Poetics

Abstract

This article examines how the urban fabric of Lagos is being transformed by neo-Pentecostal forms of Christian religiosity—a transformation not only of inner, ‘private’ lives but also of urban infrastructures and their provision. Neo-Pentecostal churches in Lagos now provide a range of infrastructures such as roads, bridges, electricity, water, healthcare, plus banking and educational facilities as well as a range of residential options. Church emblems are common features of the Lagos streetscape and can be found on buildings, vehicles and advertisement hoardings. In addition to their symbolic, moral and aesthetic register, Pentecostal urban infrastructures can be understood as a response to the crisis of social reproduction in Lagos, within the context of a postcolonial state that has adopted a position of entrenched neoliberalism. Critical questions remain, however, regarding whose interests are served by this arrangement. The article aims to understand (1) the ontological status of neo-Pentecostal infrastructures, taking seriously the production and delivery of material infrastructures that are understood by some users to also be spiritual; and (2) the novel relations between church, state, market and citizen articulated by these infrastructures. Our arguments are based on qualitative data collected in Lagos between 2018 and 2022.