Welcome Back To Lagos

WORDS BY CHIBUNDU ONUZO

There are some seemingly obvious things for tourists to do in Lagos and late last year, I decided to try some of them.Although I grew up in Lagos, I rarely engaged with the city as a tourist. As a child, my family and I went to the beach a few times and we went to the National Museum once. That is all I remember. Lagos was for movement, for making money, for hustling, not for stopping and staring, unless you want okada to jam you while you’re standing in the road admiring the Brazilian architecture.

Last year however, I decided I would be a tourist in Lagos. I would approach the city as if I’d never been there before. I’d look at it with new eyes while wearing sunscreen and posting numerous pictures online.

The internet told me to start with Lekki Art Market. it is the first stop for any tourist who is serious about seeing Lagos. You buy your ‘authentic’ African jewellery and art there and take it home as proof that you’ve been to ‘Africa’. I wandered around the market for about an hour and saw 75.3% of Lagos’s caucasian population in one place. I bought one Ankara bag, then two. Then one Ankara scarf then two. Then one pair of Ankara earrings, then two. There’s only so much Ankara a person can buy before calling it a day.

Next was Lekki Conservation Centre. it is a large, tropical forest in the middle of a very bustling part of Lagos. Stepping into its premises was like going back in time to a blessed era before Mr Biggs, MTN and Big Brother Naija. The main reason I went was for the treetop canopy walk but sadly it was closed on the day of my visit. Thus I spent one hour being terrorised by the monkeys of the reserve who have grown overly familiar with human beings. The reserve promised crocodiles, snakes and monitor lizards but all I saw were monkeys.

Last but not least, the internet directed me to the Nike Art Gallery. It is a temple to contemporary African art with floor after floor dedicated to both established and up-and-coming artists. 

I saw everything the internet told me to see in Lagos in one day. One day and my ‘tourism’ was officially over. Except Lagos is a funny place. Once you stop looking for things to see, you start seeing them.

I was sitting in traffic when I came face to face with a giant mural. The artist Polly Alakija had painted a face on all the pillars supporting Falomo Bridge. Anyone who knows Lagos knows that under-bridge is associated with homelessness, with poverty, with crime and yet, an artist had transformed this one into an open-air gallery. For once I was happy to sit in traffic studying those faces, all female, African women, the pillars that hold up the sky.

On another instance, I went to visit a friend in Park View estate in Ikoyi and I stopped the car to gawk at the mansions. Park View is a testament to Nigeria’s wealth and corruption. On the gates of many mansions were scrawled the words: “UNDER INVESTIGATION BY EFCC KEEP OFF.” In other parts of the world, there are bus tours around the wealthiest districts to point out the houses of the super-rich. Parkview definitely deserves such a tour. There was one mansion in particular aptly called “Palazzo”. Nigerians are sometimes wary of flaunting their wealth but not in Parkview. The gates of this Palazzo were metal bars with large gaps in between. You could see the mansion, with a façade like Versailles. You could see a parade of luxury cars. It had rained a few days before and some roads in Parkview were slightly flooded. There is no proper drainage in Parkview estate but there’s a Palazzo. 

It was only towards the end of my last trip to Lagos that I realised that tourism in the city doesn’t have to be one thing. It doesn’t have to be a day in a museum or a trip to an art market.

Once you stop looking in Lagos, you realise that there’s so much to see.

Chibundu Onuzo, a Nigerian writer, is author of The Spider King's Daughter and Welcome to Lagos.

This story is from ìrìn journal: The Lagos Issue