...let youself go!

Article One
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 Waterside). “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 – a favourite snack of Port Harcourt residents – I set out to locate the place....more

Article T wo
Of bronze and brass

“Let’s go. Let’s go. We’re casting,” Nosa says, grabbing three bronze works from the top of a log. He has just started to explain an important aspect of the art of bronze casting, a craft the 56-year-old says he’s been engaged in for two decades.. ....more

Article Three
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....more

Article Four
The 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.In heated palm oil, morning, noon and night; from Iwo Road to Orita Bashorun I come ...more

Article Five
Height of devotion

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....more