We are off tomorrow to the city of Lokoja for the weekend. Lokoja is the capital of Kogi state, which borders FCT, and is about a 2.5 hour drive from Abuja.
Lokoja is famous for two things: 1) being the point at which Nigeria's two largest rivers, the Niger and the Benue, converge; 2) being the former capital of the Northern Nigerian Protectorate and the city from which the first Governor-General of Nigeria, Lord Lugard, governed the new nation (the name Nigeria was suggested in 1897 by a British journalist and novelist named Flora Shaw, who later became Lugard's wife), after the amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Nigerian Protectorates in 1914.
Our opportunities for travel within Nigeria will be limited, so we were keen to join in this trip organised by the newly reinvigorated Nigerian Field Society. We were given a taster of the town in this article about Lokoja, which began with the intriguing line: 'Welcome to Lokoja, home of Mount Patti. Residents say that less than 30 years ago, hyenas used to descend from this hill to devour people's domestic animals'. (It is unclear to me why residents say this; is this meant to be a selling point?).
The article continues:
'Truly, there aren't many towns like Lokoja in Nigeria's North-Central geopolitical zone. Be they historical relics and geographical monuments, Lokoja has them all...Given Lokoja's place in Nigeria's political history, it comes as no surprise that the town has so much to offer the tourist. Lokoja offers at least half-a-dozen tour sites. From many parts of Lokoja, the tourist can savour alluring sight of terraces of houses cascading down Mount Patti. But, from everywhere the observer can see three or four telecommunications masts: This is the apogee of Mount Patti and it is here the local Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) station stands'.
I have consulted my trusty Brandt guide to Nigeria and can hardly contain my anticipation at the prospect of not only observing the telecommunication masts from numerous angles, but possibly visiting the site of the confluence of the Benue and Niger rivers, where I may be able to glimpse 'a nice view of the brown sludgy rivers drifting slowly alongside one another between separate sandbanks until there are no more sandbanks and the river is one'.
[I have just looked on Google images for a photo of Lokoja to accompany this post. All I could find were images of flooding, car crashes, illegal weapons, dead bodies and naked women. So I went instead for the image of the Lokoja Master Plan, which I presume bears no resemblance to reality but is rather more palatable than the alternatives. Although this giant hippo came a close second].
No comments:
Post a Comment