Snapshot of Lagos (Los Angeles Times)
Away from the noise and hustle and stink, the shriek of energy, the never-ending buzz that is Lagos, a man reclines on a gravestone, serenely reading a book.
His name is Immortal and he sells life insurance. He says he is waiting for an angel.
"I just come here to relax," says Immortal Emenike, 40, from his unexpected haven in Trinity Cemetery in Olodi Apapa neighborhood. "I like the serenity, the fresh air. It's very hard to find in Lagos."
Nearby, a goat named Sikira nibbles on the vegetation. Outside is a wall of sound: buzzing motorcycles, car horns and traffic.
Like many Lagosians, Immortal appears nonplussed if you ask him what he loves about the raucous megacity he calls home. He has a passion for Lagos yet seems wary of questions, in case they're not kindly meant.
"Lagos is like the New York of Nigeria," he says. "It's a jungle where a lot of things can happen. Things that don't happen anywhere, will happen in Lagos: the unexpected."
About the population ...
Lagos is one of the planet's fastest-growing megacities, with people drawn not only from rural Nigeria but from all over West Africa to hack out a living. Depending on your point of view, it's either a center of irrepressible entrepreneurialism or a nightmarish city of unplanned chaos, a cautionary tale on what not to do.
No one is sure whether the population is 9 million, as last year's house-to-house census claimed; 16 million, as estimated by the U.N. Population Fund; or 17 million, as the Lagos state government insists. The U.N. agency has predicted Lagos will be the world's third-largest city by 2015, with 23 million people.
It's not for the faint-hearted. From the first wallop of steamy air on alighting from a plane, Lagos is a plunge into intense exhilaration, jumbled with measures of shock, frustration, rage and boredom.
Despite poverty, intractable social problems, mind-boggling corruption and dire failures of planning and infrastructure, "I think this total doomsday scenario that Lagos is going to be this total Dickensian horror place is not right either," says Dan Smith, demographic anthropologist at Brown University.
"Nigerians have lived with the failure of their government to provide leadership and infrastructure for a long time, and so they have adapted all these ways to make things work.
"There's this incredible ethic and tradition of entrepreneurship, and maybe that's related to living in a place where you can't count on the government to provide services and amenities."
Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas has argued that the megacities of the future will look like Lagos: chaotic and spontaneous, with planning solutions improvised on the run rather than following a master plan.
Even arriving in Lagos can be a shock. "Lagos airport? In a word, don't," cautions the Lonely Planet Bluelist of destinations to avoid at all cost.
Borne downward on the airport arrival-hall escalator, international visitors arriving for the presidential inauguration at the end of May found themselves trapped, with a solid crowd bottlenecked at the bottom. They crashed into a wall of backs, tripped, stumbled, even leaped over the sides, literally falling into Lagos with a thunk.
Then there's the metal jigsaw of rickety trolleys pressed around the baggage carousels and sometimes a wait of hours to collect as huge bags of traders' goods are unloaded.
Outside, license plates proclaim that you've arrived in "Lagos: Center of Excellence."
The jostling thoroughfares are much more than arteries for the city's choking traffic. The roadside is an open-air market, a car-sales yard, a photo studio; a truck depot, pool hall, butcher's; a lumber yard, an office, a sheep yard; a place to hang laundry on the highway sidings or to nap.
There are some sights that strain credulity: A city skyscraper folded like a house of cards one weekend.
Papered all over walls and suspended from any pole are advertising billboards and banners, as though the city were screaming out its own exuberant and often perplexing monologue: "Food is ready"; "Slow down, bridge under investigation"; "Plumber is here"; "Please pay your tax regularly"; "Do not urinate here. It is prohibit"; "Don't offend our ancestors with fakes. Insist on the original prayer drink"; "It is illegal to have anything to do with touts. You may end up facing various miscellaneous offenses."
Taxis are plastered with biblical verses and homespun advice: "Love everyone Trust no-one." "Watch and See." "No controversy."
Businesses grab attention by turning to religion: "God is Able Store"; "Heaven Economics"; "Miracle Outfits"; "Divine Ultrasound." There are more bizarre appeals, such as the "Peculiar Beauty Salon."
The exuberance is reflected in Lagosians' flamboyant clothing and the startling towers of bright material that women wear on their heads. There are nightclubs where patrons fling all the plastic tables and chairs into the air when things are really humming.
Taiwo Adeyeye, 19, arrived alone in Lagos from the town of Ogbomosho in Oyo state in April.
"I love it because it's a commercial city. It's a place where you get a lot of buyers for your wares," says Adeyeye, who lives in a room behind a baker's shop and walks all day in the saunalike heat selling bread from a tray on her head.
"It's not really everything that I'd want," she says of her room and job. In the little leisure time she has, "I just walk around the area. I feel good walking around. The things I see all around excite me."
Networks of trust
Smith, the anthropologist, said that despite government failures and corruption, Lagosians have developed small trusting business networks, allowing them to survive and profit.
"People look at a place like Lagos and some of them think, 'Why would anyone ever want to go there, because it's so big and populated and there's so much poverty?' But people are carving out a living better than they would have been able to had they stayed at home.
"People have managed to cobble together an informal economic infrastructure that enables them to carry out all these commercial activities somehow. Everyone's getting water for their homes somehow and every business manages to hire a generator to keep their business going."
At times the city is visual anarchy, with piles of uncollected trash, mountains of jumbled timber, abandoned car skeletons, tires. Lagos produces 500,000 tons of trash a day, according to a recent environmental report to the state government, and much is collected and dumped anywhere.
A train drifts by with people crowded on the roof. Traffic buzzes the wrong way up a one-way street, spreading across the lanes like water in front of the opposing traffic flow.
Back in the cemetery reading his book, Immortal says, "You have to be cautious all the time. Maybe I'm walking and I step on your shoes, even if it's by mistake. It can cause a big fight and in the end the police arrive. ...
"You see it every day. Things that should be cooled down are blown up like a volcano. The serenity here helps me to mellow and think of good things."
New Terminal to Open July 1 (Vanguard)FLIGHT operations at the ultra-modern terminal 2 of the Murtala Mohammed Airport in Lagos will commence on July 1, 2007.
This is coming barely weeks after the builder and concessionaire, Bi-Courtney Aviation Services, concluded an arrangement with airline operators on how they could operate at the terminal.
Coming some two months after former President Olusegun Obasanjo commissioned the project, the terminal is expected to assist airlines for regional and domestic operations.The company's Head of Corporate Affairs and Communications, Mr. Biodun Bakare, said yesterday that after a successful test run of facilities at the terminal in the last two months, it was convinced that operations at the terminal could start in earnest.
The Dr. Wale Babalakin-led Bi-Courtney Aviation Company, has the mandate to run the terminal on as a concessionaire on behalf of the federal government, having built it in Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) basis.
According to Bakare, the trial period of the terminal building, otherwise known as MMA2, was used to test run the facilities and eliminate possible flaws in the system. He said two Nigerian airlines, Chanchangi and IRS, operated from the terminal during this period.
, adding that the trial showed the uniqueness of the terminal in terms of its capacity to accommodate the travelling logistics of passengers.
Bakare also said the test run afforded the company the opportunity to adjust some infrastructural facilities, such as the central cooling system, stressing that the company had reached an agreement with Liwet, a U.S.-based airport management company, to assist it in managing the terminal
"All things being equal, Nigerians, especially corporate businesses, among others, will start to fully enjoy the world class facilities of the new terminal which was commissioned on April 7 this year by the Former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo.
"The Airport will provide secured and car friendly parking facilities for over eight hundred cars in it's multi-storey car park and V.I.P section while the terminal is insulated with four layers of roofing to prevent sound intrusion," Bakare said.
He noted that the new terminal would contribute positively to making Lagos Airport the regional aviation hub in West Africa.
He said: "It demonstrates that Nigerians can get the comfort they deserve and can be truly said to be designed to end travellers' inconveniences."
At the commissioning of the project in April, former President Obasanjo had said government commissioned the terminal to the private sector for re-development with a view to preparing the Lagos Airport as aviation hub in the sub-region.
The terminal was gutted by an early morning fire in 2000, and was given Bi-Courtney Consortium, to re-build on BOT basis, after an earlier agreement between the federal government and Sanderton Company collapsed in 2003.
Fuel Shortage Continues in Abuja (Daily Champion)
REPRIEVE is not yet in sight over fuel scarcity as the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) says it has no immediate solution to fuel shortages in the country.
This came as Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) also says fuel queues in Abuja would linger for another week.
Group Managing Director of NNPC, Mr. Funso Kupolokun, who posted a gloomy picture of the internal fuel market said queues would not ease until the nation's moribund refineries resume operations by August.
Daily Champion reports that the four refineries with combined installed capacity to process 445,000 barrels of crude oil to produce 18 million litres of products per day currently operate at less than 15 per cent installed capacity.
Three of them located in Port Harcourt and Kaduna have been sold to indigenous Bluester Consortium in a flawed deal that sparked off protests and contributed to the recent labour strike in the country.
NNPC however still retained the 150,000 barrels per day at Warri refinery which currently operates at zero capacity utilization.
Answering questions from the Speaker of the house Representatives, Mrs. Patricia Etteh, over lingering scarcity of products in the country, Mr. Kupolokun admitted that NNPC could not meet internal demands by importation.
He said the refinery outages and weak pipeline network have made it difficult for the corporation to efficiently managed fuel distribution in the country.
Mr. Kupolokun who was responding to a query by Speaker, House of Representatives, Mrs. Patricia Etteh over surging queues at filling stations, disclosed that the Corporation was currently experiencing difficulty in distribution of imported products owing to damaged pipelines to the various depots across the country.
Currently, he said, trucks load products directly from oil vessels on the sea and takes about four days to travel from Lagos to Abuja and other parts of the country, a development which has compounded products supply.
He said delay in repair of the damaged Atlas Cove-Mosimi line which was recently gutted by fire meant that the trucks would be loaded with products directly from oil vessels.
"Today every litre of product is imported through Lagos . Even in Lagos we are having challenges. Atlas-Mosimi line was destroyed and being repaired. The result is that we cannot even pump what we have to the depots. All the depots are dry. Every litre we are using comes through trucks", Kupolokun explained.
The NNPC boss also attributed the long queues to the aftermath of the last nationwide strike as tanker drivers refused to operate while the four days action lasted.
Earlier, Mrs. Etteh had queried Kupolokun on the reason behind growing queues in Abuja and other parts of the country, stating federal lawmakers were under pressure to intervene in the problem and normalize products supply.
Mr. Kupolokun and a retinue of top NNPC staff were at the National Assembly to congratulate Mrs. Etteh on her election as the first female speaker in the political history of Nigeria .
On his own PENGASSAN President Peter Esele said the long queues at filling stations in Abuja will continue for one more week.
He told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN)today in a telephone interview that the problem was due to the build-up from the suspension of fuel lifting.
Esele said petrol tanker drivers did not lift fuel during the four-day NLC-TUC strike which was suspended at the weekend.
"The point is that as more tanker drivers load fuel for delivery, the more the situation will normalise," he said.
The labour leader, who noted that the demand for the product was high, said the build-up would "fade out" gradually.
He explained that since there was no fuel depot in Abuja, tanker drivers queued up for three days to load to meet the demands of the city's residents.
"Already the situation has normalised in Lagos so there is no cause for panic buying.
assure you that very soon the situation will normalise," Esele said.
Also speaking, NUPENG National President Peter Akpatason said that efforts would be made to ensure that Nigerians did not suffer untold hardship due to shortage in fuel supply.
"Already, my members are discharging their responsibility of delivering PMS in all the petrol stations across the country," he said.
Home of Businessman Attacked in Rivers State (Nigerian Tribune)
AN explosion on Thursday rocked Port Harcourt, Rivers State, when some persons suspected to be hoodlums threw a dynamite at the home of a businessman, Mr. Theophilus Amadi, and also allegedly demanded for N20 million.
The incident, which took place in Okinaga, Obiakcor Local Government Area of the state, threw many people into confusion.
Though people did not die in the explosion, it, however, destroyed a part of the building occupied by Amadi's tenants and also damaged a car parked beside the building.
Nigerian Tribune gathered that after throwing the dynamite, the hoodlums sent a text message to Amadi.
In the text, they allegedly told him to drop the sum of N20 million for them to avoid further attack.
When contacted, Ngozi, Amadi's wife, who is also a lawyer, confirmed the incident. She wondered why anybody could do that to her family.
"My husband is not a politician and I am very sure we are not owing anybody to warrant being attacked," she said.
A tenant of the Amadis, Joy Emmanuel, who said she has lived there up to eight years, said that they had never witnessed any form of attack since she started staying there.
She described her landlord as a peace-loving person. Amadi, it was further gathered, had reported the case at Trans-Amadi police Station.
However, the Rivers State Police Commissioner, Mr. Felix Ogbaudu, said he was not aware of any such incident, but said "I will have to confirm from my DPO Special Area".
Governor Says 50 Billion Dollars Not Too Much (Vanguard)
Governor Liyel Imoke of Cross River State has said that committing 50 billion U.S dollars to the development of the Niger Delta is not out of place, stressing such an amount when directed towards progressive projects was capable of turning the region around and curbing youth restiveness.
He spoke while receiving the chairman of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Ambassador Sam Edem in his office in Calabar.
According to the governor, "a nation that is determined to develop its ravaged and deprived area should not see the commitment of $50 billion into its development as being too much, because such an amount was capable of turning around the economic fortunes of the people".
Senator Imoke who suggested that land ownership in the region be reviewed to allow owners of land become shareholders of what is available in their areas to ensure peace also spoke of the need for governors of the oil producing states to come together in view of socio-economic interests.
For him, governors of the oil producing states should "come together as a body to pursue their socio-economic interest than the current emphasis which is laid on the geo-political zone for the development of the region."
The governor who also called for the establishment of a railway line to serve the region was impressed by the NDDC Masterplan saying that the masterplan in the areas of the provision of infrastructure should be implemented by the commission while states should take care of social services."
Responding, the NDDC chairman, Ambassador Edem disclosed "#269 billion has been the funding of NDDC till date".
He said the Masterplan also recommended for the intensification of projects in Cross River State, establishment of regional railway line from Cross River through Eket to Lagos, establishment of coastal roads, improvement of canalization and creation of growth poles, among others.
The Master Plan also revealed that the commission has patnered with donor agencies as well as gas and oil firms to execute some of its projects while its security attention is focused on both political and social dimensions.
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