Who gets Terra Kulture’s nod for phase 2?

BY AYODELE ARIGBABU
I SPIED him out there on the lawn through the glass façade he must have once sketched while designing the building, Goke Osibodu of design / identity assets company MOE with his children, chatting away with Bolanle Austen-Peters of Terra Kulture.
It is on rare occasions that you meet the prime accomplices to a crime on the very scene where it was perpetuated.
I walked out of the restaurant to say hello and then asked the most mundane question I could think of just to stir up something. If you had a chance to change something in this building you did here, what would it be?
Trying to sound all smart and spontaneous without revealing that I’d just paraphrased a similar question asked of a totally different subject by a totally different person just moments ago. He thought for a moment and confessed that he wouldn’t change a thing, granted that the client — Mrs. Austen-Peters had added a few thing after he’s handed the building over to her, but he was happy all the same.
Austen-Peters was just as happy, particularly with the African themed furniture in the restaurant, which she confessed would be carried over into their new project, an extension to the present facility, being planned for the adjoining plot which had been recently acquired and cleared for temporary parking space.
Nosy-so-and-so that he tends to be when it comes to design matters, the design sleuth seized the opportunity to ask who would be designing Terra Kulture Phase 2.
While Mr. Osibodu glossed over the question, Mrs. Austin-Peters was straight and direct. The South African firm @126 Group, an integrated design firm led by the dup of Nick Ristic and Jack Neeves, which had made a few incursions into the Lagos design scape were doing the honours while MOE Identity Assets would be handling the interiors… Mr. Osibodu didn’t seem to have her time when she needed his architectural expertise she sort of intoned, while the architect looked away sheepishly.

GEEZ, in a recession bitten third world economy, some architects still have the luxury of being too busy for certain clients, especially clients like Terra Kulture - a prime culture venue in the country’s hippest city that could and did allow some leeway in terms of quirky notions like African themed furniture and ramps that curve to the first floor like primeval suspension bridges… is MOE still that busy building all those Guaranty Trust Bank branches they chew their way through like school kids chewing through their favourite wafers?
When I grow up, I want to be like Mr. Osibodu and be too busy to answer briefs from clients like Terra Kulture, busy enough to let a South African firm do it while I concede to squeeze in the time to just do the interiors… for old times’ sake.
But it wasn’t only Goke Osibodu that was in the building on that night, there was also Alan Davies of James Cubitt Architects who the design sleuth was too happy to say hello to though I can bet my spectacles he was struggling to remember where we’d met before (he can be forgiven, he’s come a long way) and Theo Lawson of The Lawson + Odeinde Partnership, who graciously took the design sleuth down memory lane on an old pet project that had found a life of its own.
Meeting one’s former bosses at a book launch is not something that happens to you every day especially when you are a layabout like the design sleuth, but if there’s vodka and campari and red wine and small chops and Seun Kuti and the Egypt 80 band and good company peppered with delectable ladies to go with it, then it gets all that more significant. It was the book presentation for Outsider Inside — longtime serving expatriate, Keith Richard’s book on his experiences in and out of different board rooms in Nigeria and…the Design Sleuth was nicely snuzzled…you must have figured that out already.

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Soyinka in the splendour of an India palace

BY Ayodele Arigbabu
AT the Jaipur Literary Festival held this past January 21 to 25, Wole Soyinka wowed the crowd with his voice, earning a remarkable headline in a national daily: ‘Soyinka casts a spell over Jaipur!’ The Nobel laureate was practically mobbed by young Indian literary enthusiasts who desperately wanted his autograph.
However, the design sleuth, warped mind and all, was more interested in Soyinka’s place of abode for the period.
Beyond envious headlines and wild mobs asking for his autograph, what does it feel like being a Nobel laureate?
What sort of hotel is worthy of his status when being hosted by the self-styled biggest literary event on earth.

ENTER the Rambagh Palace Hotel. The cheapest room at the Rambagh Palace Hotel in Jaipur, the capital of the North Indian state of Rajasthan costs N79,500 (26,500 rupees) while the most expensive suite is about N600,000 (195,000 rupees) per night.
Yes it is, quite literally, in every sense, a princely place to stay at.
A former home of the Maharaja (king) of Jaipur, converted to a palace from a guest house and hunting lodge to his taste in 1925, the edifice stands as a worthy example of successful adaptive re-use and impressive conservation of a historical monument, a trend which has caught on in Jaipur and other parts of India.
The architects Amit and Shalini Gehlot were commissioned by the Royal Family in 1999 to renovate the palace, which had already been converted into a luxury hotel in 1957 before being taken over by the Taj group in 1972.
The architects were given the project on condition that they approached the project with deep reverence for the cultural and historical relevance of the site, as if they didn’t have their work cut out for them already, having to introduce elevators, air-conditioning, hotel reception and other perks that would be expected of a modern luxury hotel.
The palace’s generous acreage of lush lawns came in handy though, providing extensive ready-made gardens for the new hotel.
The local paper DNA.Sunday also reports that the duo had to recreate an Italian carpet for the floors from what the royal family could remember about the original and other items of furniture and other decorative elements had to be recreated from photographs of the originals that survived.
“In fact, the Indian influence in the palace was limited and we had to be honest to its colonial flavour and architecture,” DNA quoted Amit Gehlot as saying in response to the notion that the main challenge they had was in reflecting the Indian heritage of the old building.
“The royals were widely influenced by their travels abroad and this was reflected everywhere – in the architecture, artifacts and furnishings.”

INDIAN architecture’ interestingly is almost as vague a term as ‘Nigerian architecture’, India is made up of such diverse cultures that have in turn been influenced by several foreign influences over the centuries that it is nigh impossible to articulate a particular style that is purely Indian.
However, the Rambagh Palace hotel makes good use of ornamentation and tasteful décor in delivering a super luxury hotel. The ceiling of the main banquet hall is said to have been hand-painted in exquisite detail by Italian prisoners from the Second World War.
The architects had to closely monitor the recreation and renovation of these and many other details. The doors opening out from the reception lounge into the inner courtyards are not mere doors, they are carefully sculpted with the lintels housing them following each turn with amazing precision. And then you have richly liveried attendants at every corner you turn, manning each door and staying within range, bowing in greeting even when you head into the rest room. Splendour redefined.

THE authors of the quirky book of trivia — Superfreakonomics — offer that for no clear reason, Nobel Prize winners tended to live longer than their peers who merely got nominated or were just as good but never got nominated. With his luxurious white mane and rich sonorous voice that bewitched the audience at the Jaipur Literary Festival, little wonder that Wole Soyinka remains such a sprightly septuagenarian despite having spent so many months in solitary confinement during the Nigerian civil war and despite the appalling politics that still draws his ire from his home country, propelling him just recently to lead others on a protest march to the nation’s capital.
If you are housed at places like the Rambagh hotel from time to time, you sure will live to survive all that.
With that deduction in mind as I walked down the steps of the super luxury hotel and waited while they called for my cab, I felt once again, like a Maharajah.
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Ibadan... The Sleuth’s pilgrimage

by Ayodele Arigbabu
SEEKING a breathe of fresh air, the design sleuth recently packed a backpack and hit the road to Ibadan with co-conspirator and fellow design inquisitor, James George, as company. The excuse was an invitation to speak with some university students at the IrawoUniversity Centre, however, the university being on strike, the trip turned out to be more of a pilgrimage to the two Demas Nwoko buildings domiciled in Ibadan — The Dominican Institute and the New Culture Studios at Oremeji. Architecture is a profound enterprise to engage with for the ones who create the experiential spaces we all love to visit and for those who will keep enjoying the little gifts of visual and spatial experiences tucked into the built forms for them to discover. At Ibadan, we had our fill; I’ll shut up now and let you have a taste...but for the real thing, you need to pay those buildings a visit! Thanks to Tayo Fagbule and everyone at Irawo who were such marvelous hosts, to Demass’ daughter-in-law and her twins, who opened the door at Oremeji and showed us round and to Father Justice at the Dominican Chapel who still shared in our awe of a building he’s experienced for decades.

The House Nike Built

After years of dreaming it, and living and reliving its spirit, leading art maker and women empowerment specialist, Nike Okundaiye has finally birthed a befitting home for her volumptious art works. The new Nike Art Centre, her first in Lagos after that in Ogidi-Ijumu, her home town; Abuja and Osogbo, where her career really started is a baeutiful edifice with lavish space for the display of her works and that of the multitude that she mentors through her various workshops and skill acquisition programmes for the less-priviledge artistes and art enthiusiasts. The gallery is situated at Plot 2, Lekki 2nd Roundabout at Ikate Lekki. Robustly jovial as usual, Mrs Okundaiye told The GuardianLIFE during the week: “The new ‘Nike Art Centre’ with an art gallery and textile museum in Lagos is built to celebrate Nigerian cultural heritage”. In deed, every one of Nike’s activities in hernear-five decades lofty career has been remarkably slanted to stress this patriotic dimension to the service of the arts and humanity. She disclosed that the new gallery may be formally opened sometime in October. IN the past 20 years, Nike has given workshops on traditional Nigerian textiles to audiences in the US and Europe. While she is known for her colorful batik and paintings that offers a modernist gloss on traditional themes, she was brought up amidst the traditional weaving and dying practiced in her native village of Ogidi in Western Nigeria. Her fame as an artist and teacher has taken her all over the globe. Now, she invites you to visit her in Nigeria and immerse yourself in African tradition”, stated her website. “Nike found that the traditional methods of weaving and dying that had been her original inspiration were fading in Nigeria. She used her international success to launch a cultural revival, building art centers where young Nigerians master traditional arts and crafts. You can now visit the world of the Yoruba, to explore a culture that has flourished in Western Nigeria for well over 1000 years”.

The curious house on Lawanson Street

By Ayodele Arigbabu
Architecture has the potential to do much more than just delineate spaces for human activities, in truth; architecture can create excitement and bring new energy to a community. That much did the design sleuthe find out while chatting with James George on his self styled ‘twist cube’ design for the Guaranty Trust Bank branch in Lawanson, Surulere, Lagos; which has since completion become a head turning spectacle in the ever bustling neighbourhood. It is not always that you encounter a building that makes you look again, especially in the seediest parts of Lagos, James George tells us why and how he set out to do what he did with the building. There’s been some excitement over a particular branch of Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB) in Lawanson, Surulere got any clues what the static is all about? I’m wondering, I’ve had a few calls at odd times about the design and how some concerned individuals think it’s collapsing. I just laugh it off. What do you think? Word has it that you are responsible for the urban disturbance, what’s the history? What role did you play? I hear that too... I was approached by Yaba based Line Smiths Design Associates (LSDA), to provide a response to a place that has developed in a certain way. I imagined that the area would grow in a certain way, in the next few years. This is what I describe as an Urban Architecture or Urbanitecture. The building already existed as a shop. The question was how to take a boring shop design into a future that has no such buildings... the response was the twist cube Can we infer from that, that your imagination led you to a future where Lawanson will be populated with buildings that appear to be collapsing? Were you trying to create an ironically ‘iconic’ reference to the history of collapsed buildings in Lagos?...okay, what really is the twist cube? The twist cube is an allegorical reference to the GTB logo. It says that the readings of the GTB cube that go on to form its architecture are assumed to have reached an end. The idea is speed. And excitement. That part of Lawanson is always congested. The building provides excitement, and enjoyment to the static viewer. Architecture should provide enjoyment to the onlooker. People always need to be surprised... Lagos needs to provide surprise for 17.5 million people; or 8 million depending on where you look at it from! (Laughs). So the design intention was not simply to give a notion of a collapsing building as many concerned citizens have assumed? Is that ‘collapsed building’ feel something serendipititious or evidence of a gap between your original design intentions and the ability of the builders to interprete those thoughts from the drawings? I wanted to cover up the existing building with a sign post and create some movement around that area. the area was quite dull and monotonous before the interruption caused by the twist cube. I actually set out to create a slant at the angle that the builders built it to. The twist cube is one of the rare occurences in the profession in this country what we set out to do was obtained to a very close degree. It’s alarming and audacious, and clear. These metaphors, in addition to the layering of other ideas are the thoughts that go to form my architecture there. The LSDA ensured that what we thought of first was what we got in the end. Kudos to those fellas. They sure can build. (Laughs). The building has been described as one of the more arresting attempts at deconstruction on the design scene in these parts, I picked up a little book on Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum -one of the better known temples to deconstruction - in Berlin last year and in it, an attempt was made to explain deconstruction: ”The deconstructivist architects are similar in their approach, although they have different architectural styles and do not define themselves as a group. But they, too, try to break up the foundations of a modernism that has become static, a rational geometry that has become a dogma. Their work is no longert centered just on the finished building- in their complex building plans and sketches the process of designing itself becomes the central theme. Their buildings deliberately show the disparate character of their parts.” Where would you place your work as typified by the Twist Cube within this mileu? Hmm, the built form of the twist cube has been described as deconstructivist? I prefer ‘responsive’. Our architecture in Africa is naturally deconstructivist. The insistence on the non Euclidean geometry, that caused the deconstructivist eureka moment in Europe is common place in our traditional architecture. This is the reason why I cannot align my thought process to that of the Libeskinds and Eisenmans of this world. They learnt fractal geometry, but as Africans we are born with the ability to see all the fractal dimensions of time. This has been so from our religious responses to our social outlook. Deconstruction, as they call it is another African response that has been theorized and pimped out by European intellectualism. Here, non linearity is natural, and indeed spiritual. I have not deconstructed a building, i have only created an African Temple of Banking in the lines of Susan Wenger’s Oshogbo architectural responses. If this is not African, I dont see what else is... dreamarts.designagency@gmail.com www.designpages.blogspot.com

…Just before the Theatre of absurd

BY AYODELE ARIGBABU
THE latest hoopla over the fate of the National Theatre with the change of management by the ministry in charge of the edifice got me thinking recently. It is no more news that the structure went into disrepair in the 90s with the leaking roof turning the main bowl into a habitat for different kinds of wildlife and the complementary spaces such as the cinema halls and other exhibition halls looking like caves. The real news is that given the right empowerment, staff of the National Theatre and National Troupe under the direction of Prof. Ahmed Yerima, painstakingly resuscitated the facility till it came back to life with lush lawns, functional cooling, a restored roof, humane interiors, and engaging programming to boot in a feat comparable to the unearthing and restoration of an ancient Egyptian pyramid by Nigerian standards. With the politricks that have currently converged dark clouds over the National Theatre at the moment, the Design Sleuthe finds it expedient to salute the courage and sense of purpose that has guided the custodians of the facility till date in renewing in some of us, the faith that things, even gigantic buildings bequeathed to us by a previous government, can be made to work in this country with determination and clear headed thinking. NOT being quite sure if the building will survive into the next decade, the Design Sleuthe recommends that you drive down there today with your family or that lady or gentleman that you always wanted to spend quality time with. There you will see people sprawled on the expansive lawns picnicking or posing for photographs, riding horses or just enjoying the view. There is likely to be a stage play or comedy show going on in one of the halls and at the world famous mammy market style watering hole called abe igi, there will be pepper soup with different types of meat and fish and a variety of drinks to sate your thirst. Mr. Biggs has a presence right there at the theatre’s entrance C and Tetrazzini is there at the gate for those who prefer fast foods. There are toilets-a-plenty and the police don’t give vagrants a chance to cause trouble. Why the public service announcement? Just in case this is the last chance you get to see what the National Theatre looks like with a decent buzz for a long while, with the way things happen in this country, you just never know.

Beauty in Railway Junkyard

BY AYODELE ARIGBABU
I THOUGHT Legacy was dead. How wrong I was; the environmental and historical interest group was still up and about. I was just the one who hadn’t taken the effort to look them up, during a chance visit to their office on Boyle Street in January, my membership was renewed.
And then, a notification popped into my mailbox for a visit to Quarter 17 at the Railway Compound, Ebute Metta — now renamed Francis Jaekel House — the headquarters of the Legacy / Nigerian Railway Joint Committee and protem location, where the committee’s Railway Museum is domiciled — as if affirming beyond all doubts, the organisation’s continued existence.

PREVIOUS excursions with Legacy (sometimes, in conjunction with the Field Society) had led at different times and with different mixes of students, expatriates and other professionals to interesting spots like the old pre-colonial relics on the Orimedu beach on the fringes of Epe, the old lighthouse and other fortifications on Tarkwa-Bay, the Osun groves in Osogbo (where we did get to pose for photographs with the late Suzanne Wenger — then in her 80s — in her house on Obokun road); and of course, the immensely enjoyable Lagos walkabouts, where John Godwin , an invaluable backbone to Legacy, no doubt, would take us like intrepid explorers down Broad Street and up the Marina and other side streets on Lagos Island, on a quiet Sunday morning, discussing the architecture and history of the buildings we encountered.
Other visits carried out in the past include to buildings of historical interest in Epe and the famous earthworks credited to Bilikisu Sungbo in Eredo, Colonial and other slave relics in Badagry, and the Nigerian Railway compound in Ebute Metta from which a couple of train rides had been organized to Abeokuta.
Besides the historical and environmental excursions though, Legacy’s main successes lie in their publication of a map of historical sites and monuments in Nigeria and their different restoration projects such as the Lumpkin House — the Leventis Foundation Building in Lagos Island and Quarter 17, also known as Francis Jaekel House in the Railway Compound, Ebute Metta.

THE museum project had come a long way since Legacy’s first visit to the Railway Compound in 1996. According to Mr. Willie Nwokedi; that visit sparked off interest in the store of historical treasures that the Railway Compound had become, those: Treasures lay in the old buildings, locomotives, workshops and other artifacts that had survived from the glory days of the Railway.
Legacy’s interest paid off a couple of years later when in 1998, the Railway authorities officially handed over Quarters 17, 21 and 24, which had been designated as antiquities buildings and all of the 4.38 acres of what was known as the Carriage and Wagon Running shed where the foundation of the Railway Museum was launched by the then Minister of Transportation —Rear Admiral Porbeni in 1999. Ten years since then however, while some preliminary reclamation work had been done to the Carriage and Wagon Shed, which was planned to house the museum, some more mileage had been achieved at Quarter 17 with the exterior of the building and the whole ground floor having been renovated. It thus made perfect sense to have a mini version of the museum up and running there while funds to put the main facility in shape were being sought.
Hence the summons, Quarter 17 was being put to some use, with a mini exhibition of old photographs showing different scenes from the history of the Nigerian Railway Corporation, old uniforms, equipment, first class cutlery and crockery, maps, aprons, buttons, and a documentary film on the Nigerian Railway Corporation.

IN attendance to receive guests were Prof. John Godwin, Mr. Willie Nwokedi and a few other members of Legacy. On the lawn outside the building were exhibited sample tracks with a maintenance trolley on display and a segment of the old Lagos tramway salvaged by Prof. Godwin from construction workers on the Marina recently.
The railway compound is replete with an air of nostalgia, even for those who never experienced the glory days of the Railway Corporation; there is something about trains, rail travel and the infrastructure that supports them that, for want of a better word, is simply captivating.
The New York subway, for example, so captured the imagination of American youths in the 80s to the extent that a whole new artistic sub-culture was birthed on the sides of the train carriages in the name of graffiti.
There is a serenity that pervades the air at the railway compound in Ebute Metta that gives the place the feel of a time capsule and makes you feel like exploring, and if you are a design enthusiast, given the right kind of guided tour, you will find sufficient material to engage your curiosity as suggested in this excerpt from an invite for a visit to the Railway Compound organized by Legacy in February 2001: “We shall be looking at some of the exhibits, which, although dilapidated, will be restored and painted in their original colours.
“These are awaiting the day, hopefully not too distant, when they will be stripped down and repainted by Legacy volunteers with the assistance of the NRC paint specialists. In the meantime, visitors will be able to take the “before” photographs, some of which will be dramatic, such as the large 40 tonnes breakdown cranes or River Class Steam Loco 207 still standing in the “elephant grass”.
“In addition, Railway staff will be showing us the main repair workshops built by Sir Armstrong Whitworth in the 1920s once described as the finest in Africa, and it is hoped to have access to the drawing office, where we will be able to see the record drawings of our exhibits as well as other items of rolling stock. It may be possible to see Mr. Taylor and Mr.Nwakairie, both ex– steam loco drivers, who can tell us more about the days of steam...”
Hopefully, with the Lagos State Government’s plans for putting a metro line in place, our interactions with trains will not be limited to museum visits in the near future, meanwhile, thanks to Legacy, the glory days are not all lost to us just yet.

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For ‘small London’...na flower we go chop?

BY AYODELE ARIGBABU
One lingering memory of Lagos is that of a market woman in a bus on Oshodi bridge, looking upon the stretch of land below, where a section of the market had been demolished by government. She sighed and intoned: “Now they will come and plant flowers here” — her sympathies obviously with the traders whose livelihoods had been destroyed by the Urban renewal drive.
Urban Renewal is never an easy task and should not be about whether landscaping / beauty and the therapeutic benefits / tourism it brings to residents and visitors alike is more important than the livelihood of the inhabitants who will be displaced or otherwise adversely affected by the change or vice-versa... Urban Renewal should be about mutual trade-offs and the good of all, which with deep soul searching, is not so impossible.

THAT was last year, five months before the bulldozers moved into Oshodi and proved once and for all that no matter how long we might have lived like barbarians, sanity can still overcome our basest instincts to perpetuate mindless clutter and congestion of a major transport artery in an all important city.
Just this year, I was on another bus (okay, the design sleuth does the bus hopping thing, but let’s assume for the purpose of this discussion that I leave the Maybach parked at home occasionally in the cause of my anthropological studies of the designscape) and heard a passenger from upfront exclaim animatedly — “Eh-ehn... is this Oyingbo? Lagos don dey become small London o!” Another citizen made a similar statement on National Television just a couple of weeks after.
Lagos? Small London? As much as their euphoria for the improving face of Lagos might be appreciated, their depiction of one of the foremost urban centers in Africa as a city aspiring towards ‘Londonness’ (is it not that small ‘town’ in the UK that they’re all referring to with froth in their mouths?) is irritating to say the least because there-in lies the problem. Lagos should be a city that London should aspire towards! Okay, that’s mind numbing right? But we Nigerians, we’ve been so used to sub-human standards that when presented with slight improvements, we assume we’ve attained nirvana. If our imagination was alive and well, we would know that the current efforts can only be the beginning, we would know that there is still a long way to go in building this city into a world class urban center, we would not be asking “Na flower we go chop?” like brainless beasts who must ‘chop’ everything, including our own dignity as a people.
I’m seeing some parts of Lagos as if for the first time despite having plodded through those same streets for the past several years. Illegal sheds, stalls, awnings and other mindless assemblages that once defaced building and made their finer character indiscernible are being stripped off with unprecedented alacrity. Even shop owners, the perpetrators of all that clutter have got the message, they are curtailing their own excesses in an unprecedented wave of public compliance to government directives and all of a sudden, old dusty decrepit buildings are wearing new coats of paint.
You look around and feel lost, the buildings are breathing, they communicate their contribution to the streetscape a lot better, you don’t feel so hot under the collar anymore just walking down the street, because your eyes are not assaulted to the same degree to which they were previously, but you are not thinking ‘small London’, you’re thinking ‘new Lagos’.

You read a quote ascribed to Dr. Samuel Johnson, London’s foremost dramatist of the 19th century and feel envious, what are they feeling like, that quote should have been directed at Lagos: “You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.” This quote, adapted to Lagos should explain to the governor why many of us are not going to leave this town, sorry your work is not going to get any easier with a sudden drop in population, this is where we must rock and die, and we’d better make it work together.
But this ‘small London’ thing is so very annoying, what is it about London sef?” So what if the city has survived a revolution, a great plague (that extinguished 100,000 souls), a great fire (that razed 80 percent of the city); all in quick succession in the 17th century, yet grew in population to become the world’s largest city by 1914. The world wars, particularly the blitz of German air bombings between 1940 and 1941 that claimed 30,000 lives and 130,000 houses, social unrest in the 1980s and more recent terrorist attacks –– especially that of July 2005, which coincided with the announcement of London as host city for the 2012 Olympics –– and the current global financial meltdown have not been sufficient catastrophes to steal the swagger from the flagship city of ‘cool Britannia’.
Reading former Mayor of London –– Ken Livingstone reel out the city’s plans for using the opportunity of their hosting of the 2012 summer Olympics to upgrade the city’s infrastructure and engage the east end in some serious urban rejuvenation in the October 2008 edition of the Cityscape magazine, one starts to feel heightened pangs of jealousy. Can ‘Fash’ have enough time to help us catch up with the rest of the world once and for all and stop these ‘small London’ jibes decidedly?
Sure Lagos had its share of ‘bombardment’ from British gunships at the tail end of the 19th century to encourage the Oba of Lagos to cede control to the Queen of England, however, that’s child’s play in comparison to the Blitz... Lagos even remained completely untouched throughout the civil war! “So what is our problem? A lack of imagination I dare say, we are yet unable to imagine ourselves deserving of well maintained public parks, public transportation networks, intelligent retail systems, dignifying and attractive mass housing schemes; and as long as we lack that imagination, no matter the government’s best efforts, we will keep whining about how we can’t feed on the flowers they are planting and why their attempts to de-clutter and properly organize our streetscapes and informal retail systems are anti-poor people in a shameless glamorization of poverty like blind adherents to a primitive and outdated religion”.
It will be interesting to see London one day and say without cynicism, “Ah-ahn, London don dey become small Lagos o!” It may sound like wishful thinking at the moment, but that has always been the bedrock of remarkable development in every sphere of civilization, a healthy doze of imagination.
London facts courtesy 2008 Encarta
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PHOTOS:PAUL OLOKO