Lagos wants special status. The federation should listen — carefully.

When the Oba of Lagos used a campaign visit to revive the demand for special status, he was not improvising. Lagos has argued for years that a city-state which generates a disproportionate share of VAT and customs should not be funded like a quiet inland province.

The case has evidence. Population, ports, capital markets, the film industry, the music industry, the congestion, the flooding — Lagos is a national utility running on a state budget. Anyone who has sat in traffic on the Third Mainland at dusk knows the federation is getting a bargain and calling it fairness.

The fear, equally real, is that special status becomes a polite word for a two-speed country: one set of rules for the place that makes the money, another for everyone else. Governors in Kano, Rivers and Enugu will not queue to vote themselves into second class.

The adult version of this argument is not a title. It is a formula — a derivation rule, a congestion grant, a constitutional path for city-regions. If the campaign wants to do more than collect palace applause, it should put a number on the table and let the National Assembly fight over it in the open.