Wednesday, May 30, 2007

We Lived Here in Amukoko City




How time flies.

For a city desperately founded and developed by a working class in the 70s without tarred roads, pipe borne water and other basic amenities of life, one should be wondering why the government deliberately abandoned a slum like this where humans dwell and go about their routine businesses and social gatherings. Did humans explore this place and left it that way in this modernity?

Amukoko is a city full of small-town slums and ghettos, where the streets are filthy and not motorable, and where the population can drive you crazy. The buildings are great, ain't it? Nevertheless, Amukoko celebrates the good life in the great outdoors and neigborhoods - Orile-Iganmu, Layinka after the kpako bridge, Ojo Road - with crazy motorists, motels and all kinds of pubs at every spot. Of course, it's a great city, and that's why Naijas are the happiest people on Planet Earth.

But, today, most of us, if not all, in Diaspora, are so proud to proclaim the American dream living in posh neigborhoods with uninterupted electricity, tarred roads to our doorsteps, efficient water system, access to supermarkets, recreation facilities and orderliness as in all civil societies.

The question now is, how many people can afford to live typically of an organized and civilized society in Naija?

Nothing much has changed, and one begins to wonder!