EDITORIAL

About four years ago in this city, four expatriate ladies got together to write a guide book called AROUND AND ABOUT ABUJA. Those ladies were Francine Rodd, Jewell Kidd, Willie Cohen, and Taniko Noda.

I’ve always wondered about these authors ever since I got hold of a copy of their book (it was given to me as gift), so a few days ago, I sent an email to abuja-expats asking members for any information on the authors’ whereabouts.

The feedback? All four ladies have left Nigeria.

The Minister of the FCT at the time the book was published, Nasir Ahmad el-Rufai, who wrote the Foreword, described AROUND AND ABOUT ABUJA as “an excellent companion and one of the most in-depth and complete books ever written about the Nigerian Federal Capital Territory. It represents a well-researched, descriptive, illustrated and richly informative piece of work.”

The scope of the book is really wide and all-encompassing, such that it is all you require to put you through if you arrive here for the first time. Like most guidebooks, however, AROUND AND ABOUT ABUJA contains chapters and sections which need to be updated, especially when it comes to a fast-growing city like the one where we are now. For sure, many establishments have sprung up since 2005 when the book was published. The scenery is changing constantly. There’s hardly no place here now where a crane is not obstructing your view. And new roads have been created, needing a review of existing road maps as well. In the midst of all these changes – and fortunately for us who have made Abuja our base (whether permanently or on a temporary basis), much of Abuja is still green and fresh. The parks located in different parts of the city make it so. Thanks to those who have made it possible, Millennium Park (bottom pic) for instance is one of those divine places where one can literally take a breath of fresh air early in the morning – and we hope that it remains that way forever and ever, which of course is a topic entirely for another day. (We need to talk about the heaps of garbage that park-goers leave on the grounds every weekend and how it should be stopped.)

Back to the book: Even though some of the sections or chapters need to be updated, the rest are definitely still very much relevant today as they were three or four years ago. We therefore plan to seek permission from the authors so that we can publish on this website excerpts that visitors and newcomers may find useful. To start with, this is what they wrote on the Acknowledgement page: “We decided to donate our share of the proceeds of this book to the Abuja office of Family Care International. There is a Nigerian proverb that says, ‘Hope makes a good breakfast but a bad supper.’ Our hope is that this book will not only help make your stay in Abuja more enjoyable, it will also help to ensure a brighter future for those in need of a good super.”

Well, that sounds good to me...

The Editor
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