‘There is nothing here’: the island left behind by Lagos’s economic boom

Buses queue for passengers on Broad Street in Lagos in January. Photograph: Taiwo Arifayan/Reuters

For the estimated 2,000 residents of Refuge Island life sometimes feels like that of a refugee.

A dozen communities live on the island, which lies in a lagoon on the eastern fringes of Lagos and takes its name from the arrival of enslaved people fleeing the hinterland of western Nigeria in the 19th century. The island has never had electricity, and there are no tarred roads, only footpaths.