Once hailed as Nigeria’s model residential estate, Festac Town now grapples with overpopulation, filth, and moral decline. Once a symbol of post-Festac ’77 modernity, it has degenerated into what writer Wole Olaoye calls a “village cast in concrete and swimming in sewage.” The story of Festac’s “villagification” is both an elegy and a warning to other Nigerian estates losing their soul to neglect.
