By Patrick Okigbo III
I had spent years studying what Nigeria gets wrong, then found what someone had built forty minutes from home. What were the rest of us waiting for?
Zuma Rock announced its magnificence from a great distance; its beauty took longer to come into focus. As I turned onto the Abuja–Kaduna expressway, tankers and produce-laden lorries elbowed for the road while taxis darted through the gaps. The rock caught the late-afternoon light and stood seemingly aloof, watching the bustle at its feet.
I thought of the Koro, who named it Zumwa, the place of guinea fowls, centuries before anyone imagined Nigeria, and of the Gbagyi, who hid in it from raiders. They must have read its markings in their own way, as people still do: most see a human face, though what I saw was an upside-down fox’s head. There is something humbling about being in the presence of a thing older than all the arguments that now consume us.
My wife, Awele, and I turned through the resort gates. The road curved past a stream shaded by bamboo, then beneath neem and weeping figs whose branches met overhead. Copperleaf and dwarf palms broke up the median with patches of rust. To our right, the golf course ran towards the rock. Somewhere along that drive to the reception, I forgot about the bustle I just drove through.
On a field stood an array of solar panels. “Smart guys,” I said to Awele. We had recently decided to turn to the sun as well, as running our lives on diesel was becoming financially ruinous.
An open register carried the names of over a hundred guests celebrating Obi “Igaliga” Iwuchukwu’s sixtieth birthday. Whenever the glass doors slid open, laughter and spirited argument floated in from the poolside. I was sure Nigeria was the subject, for where two or three Nigerians gather, their country will be with them.
I recognised names from secondary school, university, and nights when we snuck out in our parents’ cars to dance at Forum or Zodiac. Too impatient to wait for the bellboy, we went looking for room 814 ourselves. The path ran between white mulberry hedges, past pigeons jostling at bird feeders. Beyond our chalet, golfers were finishing their round. A lady was riding a horse, with the rock in the background turning violet in the dusk.
By the time we had dropped our suitcases, Awele and I were asking the same questions. Who built this? How had we lived in Abuja for over fifteen years without knowing it was here? Hadn’t we flown to places like this when this one was forty minutes from home?
That stung. I have spent most of my working life studying what Nigeria gets wrong, and I had driven past one of the things it got right without noticing.
We carried our questions to the gazebo. Among the guests were a former presidential candidate, ministers, legislators, Senior Advocates of Nigeria and business leaders. There was enough experience around those tables to answer my questions. There was influence. There was capital.
Igaliga told us the resort belonged to a Syrian family. He had embraced the patriarch in appreciation earlier that day. From his account, the owner and his wife, a medical doctor, believed in Nigeria’s potential. They had voted with their money and time.
“Shame on all of us,” I heard myself say. The table paid attention.
It was a severe verdict on those of us with resources, experience and choices, myself included. Plenty of Nigerians were already building against formidable odds. But here we were, surprised to find something this good at home. Why had we expected so little?
We burn through a lot of data, clawing at each other on social media without risking much of our own money on potential answers. I know how easily another Facebook post can leave us feeling we have done our part.
None of that makes caution cowardly. Have I not watched friends shut down their import businesses when the naira went into free fall? I can’t lecture them on patriotism. Neither can I tell a parent to gamble his children’s school fees on an enterprise. Indeed, those who stay when they can japa have already made a significant patriotic choice.
There are limits to what we can fix. Awele and I can put panels on our roof, but can we chase the bandits off the Abuja–Kaduna road? An entrepreneur can run a business well and still falter because a customs rule changed while its goods were at sea. Security and predictable rules are the government’s work, and too often the government is asleep at the wheel.
A pleasant weekend says little about profitability or how easily others could replicate this enterprise. Someone maintained the grounds, serviced the rooms and prepared our food. The soldiers camped in the building beside our chalet helped us forget the threats beyond the gates. Our weekend depended on their work. Those jobs existed because someone had built a business beneath a rock.
We speak of Nigeria’s potential as though it will transform itself: the young, arable land, precious metals, the mist over Obudu and the granite of Idanre. None consoles a graduate in Kubwa who has spent three years looking for work. A magnificent rock does not employ a receptionist. Someone must see the possibility and risk their money.
Some under that gazebo had held public office. They knew how government could help or stifle an enterprise. We often celebrate our entrepreneurs for their resilience without asking why the country made survival so hard. We should.
We need not all build a resort. A rice mill outside Abakaliki would do, or a magazine publishing new Nigerian writers. Plenty already exist. They deserve our patronage and, where we can, our money.
At Nextier, we are building AlwaysON to help Nigerians finance, install and maintain solar power systems. We take away the guesswork and help customers uphold their warranties. After years of explaining why Nigerian systems fail, we are taking on one of those problems ourselves.
The laughter at the pool went on. We had come to celebrate Igaliga. Nigeria tried but could not monopolise the evening. We reminisced about youthful shenanigans when our biggest worry was ensuring we knew where the next gig would be.
Still, my mind kept returning to the solar panels and the lawns stretching towards the horizon. We had found our names in a book and collected our key. I wondered how many permits, payments and delays had preceded the creation of this place. I wondered how they navigated the falling naira, which can upend any budget, or how someone you have recruited and trained could leave for better pay just as they should be settling into the job. I had not asked the owners about their experience, but I kept thinking about what it took to keep the place running, and the rest of us having a great time.
Zuma Rock had stood there through all our years in Abuja. We had admired it from the expressway and kept driving. Someone else had stopped, seen what could be built beneath it, and gone ahead in the same Nigeria we complain about.
We cannot keep driving past and then wonder why the country stays as it is.
