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The Random Musings Of A Motor Park Architect By Ahmed Joe
As the saying goes -"it never rains in southern California". The 'yeye' farmers in that part of the world have probably never heard of Nigeria and its slick miracle workers. Because its only in Nigeria the Government will sell off its residential properties for a purported total of N 25b and still want to build a Millennium Centre for about twice the same amount when the reasons for the sales in the first place remain valid. It’s like paying $12b to make Paris a more scenic city only for you to collect $2b from the 'rural' Chinese to rehabilitate a railway network. Things are obviously getter better from the blind ambition of a third term attempt to the blind trust of owning TransCorp. And why should any body accuse Mama Bakassi for betraying her people after all they are-” beasts of no nation”. What better way to describe a people that have no Army to protect their territorial integrity (The Nigerians have left and the Cameroonians can't move in). And as for CNN who are they to tell us -“How to Rob a Bank” when after promoting the documentary for almost a week they did not remind Nigeria’s Information Minister to protest before the Broadcast.
The NITP (Nigerian Institute for Town Planners) is now reeking with 'bad belle', its EXCO is warning the FGN of the cultural implications of contracting the Abuja Master plan review to a foreign firm. I'm so sorry for them, they obviously don't know the Federal Cabinet has a notoriously insatiable penchant for being smart by half, they recently even wanted to evict Turaki in council thinking they were live on a Big Brother Otta reality show. After all its only in Nigeria that a motley crowd of ministerial vagabonds would attempt to usurp an elected VP in the full glare of a rascal in chief. Anyway the gist is that during one of their Wednesday gimmicks they approved a Master plan review for the FCT at a whopping N10m ( for local running?) and an additional 1.6m Euros (the 'roja'?) as consultancy fees for Herr Albert Speer son of Hitler's personal architect of the same name . I 'no-no' book but the on-going spate of demolitions is said to be in conformity and strict compliance of the Master plan designed by the Japanese Kenzo Tange and the IPA, yet it is to be reviewed by some Bavarian. The Master plan is after all not as iron-cast as some Harvard pizza delivery boy has been telling us, we would have to in any case ask Justice Bashir Sambo for a character reference .
In Zimbabwe the Harare City Council officials have also in the recent past embarked on an equally vicious demolition citing some antiquated Ian Smith metropolitan codes which in actual fact was a mass dis-enfranchisation exercise to displace the voters of the mainly opposition MDC. Back home in Abuja even toddlers acknowledge Mrs. Kingibe as their duly elected senator and with 2007 round the corner - you can now get the drift. The upsurge of the Chinese economy has made the mega city of Shanghai a very bloated metropolis as such its former supreme land lord, the then City’s Communist Party Secretary Comrade Huang Ju help conceive the idea of incubating a satellite towns ring. Eventually seven towns were built with hues of Architectural motifs copied from Britain, Canada, Sweden Holland, Italy, France and Germany so that “foreign visitors will not know where Europe ends and China begins” (move over Chairman Mao). Anting is the name of the German themed Satellite town, its entire Architectural style was lifted from real time Weimar in Germany. It was designed by guess who? our Albert Speer the junior, our own native junior - Frankie goes to Hollywood briefed the Press as usual on how lucky the Nation is to benefit from this type of "German transfer of technology". For the information of the motor park, Anting has a complimentary Volkswagen Assembly plant making it organic i.e. self -sustaining but nevertheless soul less.
The human costs of transforming the FCT have been largely ignored unlike in India where the Chief Minister of the State of Maharashtra ,Vilastrao Deshmukh who initiated an ambitious $86b Re-Development for Mumbai (Bombay) without demolition “fearful of losing huge chunks of the slum vote" -and who says Nigeria is a real democracy ? Nobody is saying the authorities of the FCDA should allow 'favela' (i.e. Rio) type of slums. A unique Nigerian planning solution is what should be proffered. Any attempt at any Urban renewal by demolition towards upgrading the FCT to an antiseptic Singaporean model without a corresponding 'Confucian' welfare provisions and sustained economic vibrancy will meet with certain failure. Cities do have souls and therein their attraction. Paris with its Club inflow thanks to Nigeria’s $ 12b will help sustain the Louvre (the most visited non religious building in the world) with its 6 million visitors a year of which 20,000 a day line up to view a 16th century portrait of Mrs. Lisa Gherardini better known as Mona Lisa. Orhan Pamuk is a Turkish Author of note who once asked- “ Can a city have a soul? If it can what is its soul made of? Does a city’s soul come from its size, culture and its history, or does it rise out of the image of its streets and its buildings imprint on our minds?” Will the Nigerian Architects and Town planners in Mr. Pamuk's reckoning ever be part of Abuja's soul?
The Brazilians designed and built their new capital city of Brasilia themselves, yet we call ourselves the “giants of Africa". It is in times like this one truly misses Fela.
On the island of Goree off Senegal is a so-called 'Door of No Return'. Today meticulous research has shown that no slave actually passed through that particular doorway to board any slaveship. That door is more symbolic than sacrosanct - so are Master plans. The current elected Mayor of Stockholm, Mrs. Annika was actually voted into office partly with a campaign promise articulated to violate that city's Master plan. She intends by this year (2006)ending to provide 20000 new and affordable homes for low income earners by developing the green open spaces abutting the Stockholm National Park! Equally for good measure, Mayor Yuri Luzhkov of Moscow, is one of Russia's most popular public figures currently a 3 term elected official that has always been voted with an unprecedented majority. This vodka loving Slavic has demolished more buildings than the erstwhile Mayor of Jerusalem now Israeli PM Ehud Olmert and the FCDA put together but no one in Russian contemporary history has equally built more than the former Comrade. He has built not only the highest residential structure in Europe but 60 more residential high-rises not talk of scores of shopping malls, multi-storey garages and public gardens. Meanwhile in Abuja ,as Julius Nyerere would say - "we are still trying to get to the village".
Those 'yama-yama' eggheads with mile long CVs that ill advised our temporal overlords and collaborated with them to trade off our collective patrimony will answer one day beyond 2007- Turaki being a Yola man will be at 'home' and as for AliBaba, history will certainly repeat itself in that town , Amen. Dr. Vernon Smith the 2002 Nobel Laureate for Economics and Professor of Economics and Law at George Mason University observed on the same barefaced state sponsored criminality going on in Iraq - "No country as ever given its citizens full rights to share in the wealth generated by the sale of nationalized resources and industries. Despite its simplicity, the idea of selling off public assets is by no means easy as demonstrated by the failed half efforts around the world. The many practical hurdles to implementation include the lack of credible census data to identify qualified citizens". I rest my case. |