Welcome to Lagos by Chibundu Onuzo *** (of 5)

A ragtag band of five misfits escaping military and domestic conflicts in rural Nigeria find themselves thrown together as a family as they head toward Nigeria's largest city.  Lagos is Nigeria's Dickensian, teeming metropolis where survival depends on equal parts ingenuity and luck.  The small band of five move down the economic ladder as the city swallows them alive.  living beneath a bridge among a small city of squatters.  They succumb to corruption to land small jobs while they try to maintain their humanity.

When things can get no worse than their life sleeping beneath a bridge, they take over an abandoned house whose original occupant, unbeknownst to them, is the country's secretary of education.  When the Secretary shows up with $10 million in stolen funds the misfits hold the money and the secretary and become Robin Hood.  They give the money to schools.  The irony of the book being that had the money not been stolen and captured by vagabonds who handed cash directly to school principals it would surely have been embezzled as it moved from the ministry through the sticky hands of government bureaucrats.

The impressionistic picture of Lagos is one of corruption, overcrowding, filth, unholy pollution of air and water, mismanagement, blinding disparities in wealth and opportunity, and unabated crime.  Onuzo's protagonists are well-meaning and likable, which removes much of the sting, but she has overreached.  There are so many plots and subplots and messages she is trying to put across that the final garment is a little shabby with some sloppy stitching and gaps along the seams.