Caboose

The first stop on my tour of the north was Lokoja, capital of Kogi “The Confluence State”. I arrived on a Sunday and the place seemed very quiet, although it has an interesting atmosphere, pretty much half and half northern/Hausa and south-west/Yoruba.

As the nickname of the state suggests this is where Nigeria’s two great rivers, the Niger and the Benue, join. The name Kogi means river in Hausa. Lokoja was also the first British settlement in the north, as a result it’s full of decaying colonial buildings. These include northern Nigeria’s first prison (now the laundry for the hotel I was staying in), Lord Lugard’s Residence (now a museum, below) and the first European school in the north.

I took an okada ride up Mount Pati, which rises above Lokoja and is covered in communication masts, to get a view of the rivers. On the way up and down I noticed that the local okada riders use the streams that run down from the hill and alongside the road for washing. In this case not just washing their bikes but also their clothes and themselves, the naked okada riders seemed completely unperturbed by passing traffic.