journeysaroundnigeria

Thursday September 17, 2009 | users online

Leisure&Travel

A PATH OF ME : Exhibitions of Photos from the 'Beautiful Underbelly' Tour

Botanical Gardens Calabar, A wonderful Cityscape in the City of God

TOUR OF DUTY By Pelu Awofeso

I took the decision to travel across Nigeria on a Saturday evening in March 2009 while on a short visit to Port Harcourt. There was no elaborate planning involved and I did not have all the money in the world: but having resolved in my mind that that was what I wanted to do at that stage in my life, I simply stuffed some t-shirts, toiletries, a laptop and a couple of other bare essentials (torchlight, a small hardback notebook) in a backpack and I hit the road. I touched five capital cities in the south-south region on that first leg. Read more »

Cultural Metropolis

Ibadan exists in two worlds: while it strives to embrace the necessary indices of modern living, it remains substantially a traditional society. Perhaps more than anywhere else in Nigeria’s southwest region, Ibadan is where it is an everyday thing for local traders to sit in the middle of a throbbing market at dawn and sip from a bowl of pap in much the same way it is normal to dine at a quick service restaurant a few metres away.When I think of Ibadan I cannot help but see bean cakes bubbling in ...Read more »

City of God

Calabar, the Cross River State capital, is a city for they eyes. Nature has been good to it and its inhabitants are a perfect complement to the whole setting. Even the public arts - from the flint-white city-gate (on Murtala Mohammed Way) to the larger-than-life grey lantern (balanced in front of the city’s federal university) – are attractions in themselves. They seem to have been mounted not just to improve the city’s appeal but also to hold a visitor’s gaze. "Everything about Calabar is special,...Read more »

Edge of Paradise

I have been in Port Harcourt for two weeks when I am told of an area in the old town known locally as Waterfront (alternately called Water side). “That is the real Port Harcourt,” my informer, a staff of the State’s Tourism Board, emphasises. I am curious to know more about this community on the outskirts of the present capital city. And so moments afterwards, refreshed and re-energised after a lunch of boli, roast yam and pepper sauce –afavourite snack of Port Harcourt residents – I set out Read more»

Who is Pelu Awofeso?

Travel Journalist Pelu Awofeso started out as a freelance writer in 1999 for the Plateau State Standard newspaper. Between 2001 and 2002, he contributed a weekly column called “Plateau Travelogue”, where he shared notes from his tour of the state capital Jos and environs. His first book A Place Called Peace, a guide to the Jos metropolis and surrounding areas was published in August 2002; this was followed by another Read more »

ARTICLE OF THE WEEK Height of Devotion

I was on holy ground but I did not quite realise it. “You must take off your shoes here before we go on,” my guide said as I clambered up to meet her from the foot of Sobi Hill, in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital. “People come all the way up here to pray and they must be barefooted.” Behind me an Imam seated on a bench and wearing a spotless white overall and cap to match admonished his group under an almond tree. “Now stretch forth your hands and ask God for anything you desire,” I heard him say before I pushed forward and his voice trailed off. I was on holy ground but I did not quite realise it. “You must take Read more »