A day inJos9.90°N 8.86°E
The cold months on the plateau
Jos gets genuinely cold, which almost nobody outside Plateau believes until they have spent a January there.
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Kano, Kano
12.0022° N, 8.5920° E
The last indigo pits at Kofar Mata
Five hundred years of dyeing in Kano has come down to a few dozen working pits and the men who still know the recipe.
Dispatch
“Nobody photographs the ash.”
Explore Nigeria
Every story here belongs to a place. Start with the place.
Around the country
Reporting from the six zones, one panel at a time.
From the North
DispatchMaiduguri11.83°N 13.15°E
The camels still come to Maiduguri
A trade route older than the border it crosses, and a market that has quietly kept working.
Local historyKatsina12.99°N 7.60°E
The minaret that outlived its city walls
Gobarau has stood in Katsina since the fourteenth century, when the town was a stop on the scholars' road between Timbuktu and Cairo.
Bees, cattle and the water at Gubi
Bauchi holds highland farms and dry savannah within an hour of each other, and a dam that both depend on.
From the South-East
DispatchOnitsha6.14°N 6.80°E
Everything crosses at Onitsha
A river port with what is often called the largest market in West Africa, and one bridge holding it all together.
Photo essayOnitsha6.14°N 6.80°E
Ikpu ite: the pots and the last people making them
Hand-built water pots, made the way they have always been made, by women who are candid that nobody young is learning.
What a market day actually costs
Ugu, tomatoes, peppers and stockfish: the arithmetic behind a stall, and why the price is never only the price.
From the South-West
Photo essayOsogbo7.78°N 4.54°E
The forest that was never allowed to be cleared
The Osun-Osogbo grove survived because clearing it was forbidden, and became a UNESCO site by accident of that prohibition.
Local historyAbeokuta7.16°N 3.35°E
A town that is still arranged around its rock
Egba refugees settled under Olumo in the 1830s because it could be defended. Everything since has been built outward from that decision.
Jollof, and the argument that will not be settled
The rice dish that every West African country claims, cooked over wood, at scale, for a crowd.
From the South-South
DispatchCalabar4.98°N 8.34°E
What a month of carnival is actually worth
Calabar stages the largest street festival in Africa every December. The rest of the year is the harder question.
ProfileIkot Ekpene5.18°N 7.71°E
The union that still runs the Raffia City
Ikot Ekpene has traded on woven palm fibre for a century, and the trade is still organised the way it was in the 1970s.
GuideObudu6.67°N 9.17°E
The road up to the cattle ranch
A Scottish rancher started a cattle station on the Obudu plateau in 1951 because the weather reminded him of home.
People of this place
The dyer, the teacher with the river notebook, the weavers who still run their own trade.
DispatchCalabar4.98°N 8.34°E
What a month of carnival is actually worth
Calabar stages the largest street festival in Africa every December. The rest of the year is the harder question.
DispatchKano12.00°N 8.59°E
The last indigo pits at Kofar Mata
Five hundred years of dyeing in Kano has come down to a few dozen working pits and the men who still know the recipe.
DispatchOnitsha6.14°N 6.80°E
Everything crosses at Onitsha
A river port with what is often called the largest market in West Africa, and one bridge holding it all together.
Field notes
Short observations from contributors, dated and placed.
Carnival bands rehearse in September in whatever open ground they can get, usually school compounds after hours. You hear them before you see them. By December the routines are drilled to a standard that reads on television as spontaneity.
The road past the dye pits is empty by nine and lit the whole way, which is not what anyone expects of the old city at night. The lights went in two years ago. The traders I asked all mentioned it unprompted, and all mentioned it in terms of walking home rather than of business.
The queue for the bridge on a Friday afternoon starts about four kilometres out and is entirely predictable, which has produced a whole roadside economy along the approach — food, fuel in bottles, phone charging. The congestion is somebody's living.
The market rows are ordered by seniority, not by product. The oldest weavers are nearest the road. An apprentice starting out is at the back, and moves forward over a working life, which means you can read somebody's standing off their position without asking.
Collection
Along the River Niger
From where the Niger crosses into the country to where it meets the Benue and turns south.