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Buildings We Should Remember

A fourteenth-century minaret, seven hundred years of earth wall, and a hall built to mark a hundred years of peace.

A tall square mud-brick minaret against a clear blue sky.
The Gobarau minaret at Katsina. It has stood since the fourteenth century, when the city was a stop for scholars travelling between Timbuktu and Cairo. Photograph: Uncle Bash007 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Earth architecture survives by being maintained, not by being left alone — which makes every surviving building an argument that somebody, for some period, thought it was worth the trouble. These are the ones where that argument is still being had.

The route

  1. Katsina12.99°N 7.60°E
  2. Zaria11.09°N 7.72°E
  3. Abeokuta7.16°N 3.35°E
  4. Arochukwu5.39°N 7.91°E
  1. 01
    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.

    Words Chidiebere Okafor

    7 min read

  2. 02
    Local historyZaria11.09°N 7.72°E

    Zaria's walls are going back to the ground

    Seven hundred years of earth fortification, and no clear answer to who is supposed to maintain them.

    Words Chidiebere Okafor

    8 min read

  3. 03
    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.

    Words Chidiebere Okafor

    8 min read

  4. 04
    Oral historyArochukwu5.39°N 7.91°E

    The oracle that ran the interior

    Arochukwu governed trade across the Igbo interior through a shrine, until the British destroyed it in 1902.

    Words Chidiebere Okafor

    9 min read