Ogechi Maduagwu

Though there were speculations of Christian rapture for this day, this flooding wasn't an act of God. This was an act of government, dressed up as development but functioning as environmental vandalism on a massive scale.

The same engineering decisions that flooded Lekki have disrupted water flow patterns across the entire Lagos basin. Areas that residents thought were immune to flooding are discovering that infrastructure connects everything to everything else.

The habit of writing thus for my own eye only is good practice. It loosens the ligaments. Never mind the misses and the stumbles.

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I note however that this diary writing does not count as writing, since I have just re-read my year’s diary and am much struck by the rapid haphazard gallop at which it swings along, sometimes indeed jerking almost

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Practicing an art form changes you and enlarges you. It makes you look closer at the world, think deeper, live better

I think a lot of people are dismissive of their best thoughts. They can’t put their observations on paper because they’ve already censored them in their mind. They don’t have confidence that what they see is real, because to believe that it’s real requires them to believe that their understanding of the world is as valid as anyone else’s.

we're all vulnerable to the same systemic failures, all dependent on the same inadequate infrastructure, all subject to the same governmental negligence.

Why do we read? “A book is a heart that only beats in the chest of another,” Rebecca Solnit wrote in her beautiful meditation on why we read and write. For Kafka, reading was “the axe for the frozen sea within us”; for James Baldwin, a way to change our destiny. “Reading is the work of the alert mind, is demanding, and under ideal conditions... See more

The question is whether Lagos residents will demand governance systems capable of long-term planning, environmental protection, and genuine accountability to community welfare.