Lagos-Badagry Expressway: Deplorable highway hinders Nigeria’s multi-billion naira tourism hub in historic town
Published 6 June 2021
The poor condition of the Lagos-Badagry Expressway is discouraging local and international tourists from visiting Badagry thereby killing the toursim potential of the ancient town, Afeez Hanafi reports
For months, I longed to visit historical sites in Badagry, Nigeria’s foremost tourism destination far-flung Lagos. I always looked forward to seeing monuments and relics of the transatlantic slave trade spanning 16th to 19th centuries. Those are signs of Nigeria’s history millions of people within and outside the country are curious to see.
Sometime in February, I went online to read up on tourist attractions in the ancient town. I stumbled on the line of a tour guide, Anago Osho, and quickly phoned him for enquiries. We agreed on N8,000 entry fees even though he made me realise he charges as much as N15,000 including boat fares to Gberefu Isla
Editor’s note:
The following homily preached by the Reverend Peter M. J. Stravinskas, Ph.D., S.T.D., at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Walsingham (Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter), in Houston, Texas, on the Solemnity of the Ascension of Our Lord (May 13, 2021).
The Jesus of the Ordinariate (and a few other ecclesiastical jurisdictions around the country) always catches His flight to Heaven on time, while His flight home is delayed throughout the majority of American dioceses, thus rendering the feast Ascension Sunday instead of Ascension Thursday, supposedly because a mid-week holy day is too much of a burden for either the clergy or the laity. Not only is this an embarrassing assertion, it also breaks a definite linkage with New Testament chronology (which tells us that Christ ascended to His Father “forty days” after His Resurrection); it also destroys the centuries-old novena to the Holy Spirit, whereby Catholics have joined with Our Lady and the Apostles in the Upper
BY GODSON DA-CLARKE
From childhood I read and heard Nigeria’s educational structure was 6-3-3-4 meaning six years of primary education, three years each of junior and senior secondary education, and another four years or more of tertiary education. Right now the ‘6-3’ half of it constitutes basic education, and in general, this structure runs on a five-days-a-week pattern from Monday to Friday and classes typically run from eight a.m. to four p.m. (or sometimes six p.m. if you add after-school lessons). Primary and secondary school students use school uniforms (presumably a branding strategy for the school) and then endure gruelling holiday lessons, and the certificate obtained at the end of tertiary education is assumed to be the ticket to good jobs and the good life. I think that about sums up Nigeria’s educational structure, doesn’t it?