ABOUT PROJECT ALIMOSHO HERITAGES

Mission Statement

To explore the value of history as a source of wealth for the locals through conscious realignment of their economic sense to the prized value of the culture of their ancient pasts in contemporary modern era. It is also as much a reserved opportunity for all Alimosho residents too, irrespective of tribe or origin.

Vision Statement

That the Culture of a People shall stand in evergreen of their forebears’ life time and footprints of doer personages of all acts of humanity cause pursed in the altruistic interest of the people magnified to the enthusiasm of their future generations. 

The Origin, Purpose and Products

Project Alimosho Heritages (PAH) evolves as an initiative of Barlade Image Communications (B.I.C), a Lagos based business organisation. It was originally conceived with interest in processing the historical heritages and culture of the Awori people, which Alimosho natives are, into an economic product for the Federal Government's policy of One Local Government, One Product (OLGOP). For clarity, OLGOP is a policy intended to identify one economic product with every local government. The product's economic value and the value-chain shall then be developed for national consumption and export potential.

It was in response to this that B.I.C. decided to pick the gauntlet for Alimosho's involvement. It began by conducting a relevant feasibility studies for a universal product with which to include the Local Government. Unfortunately, Alimosho has settled on the fast lane in converting arable lands to human settlement. The agricultural lands have gone into extinct. No natural resources deposit has yet been found to exist in commercial value.

            Concerned about these unfortunate results and with a strong intuitive resolve to get Alimosho involved, B.I.C. decided for a research into feasible alternative products that could be derived from the disadvantages above. Pronto, an opportunity was found in the fast growing commerce and hospitality industry in the Local Government. Gracefully enough, the unquestionable fact about this finding is that the potential complementary product directly related to this for development is tourism and culture, both in tangible goods and services.

            When B.I.C. eventually conducted a feasibility studies on the potential of culture and tourism as a product, it was found that the numerous ancient communities that have grown and coalesced to become Alimosho today were once important memorabilia corridors in the origin and evolution of Eko Akete -- the traditional name for Lagos State from Origin. It is the myths, artifacts and monuments connected with this history of Lagos but peculiar to the original settlers domiciled in Alimosho that B.I.C. has packaged into a prospect of book entitled Coming to Alimosho; the Economy, Politics and Cultural Origin of the County.

The book is structured into four-volume of four subject matters -- Culture, Politics, Economy and Religion – as they were found to be interdependent in their influential impacts on the collective journey of Alimosho to this modernity.

The fifth volume is the complete Streets Map of Alimosho, which tries to constrict the entire geographical space of Alimosho into a compact size that is fit for the perm of hand to make it a mobile community and applicable as a compass to navigate its entire landmass in just a few minutes.

As an essential note that may be valuable for stakeholders’ deeper understanding and appreciation of what to encounter in the book and in latter phases of the whole project as originally conceived, we find it imperative to give an insight to the basic master plan for the PAH, which eventually produced this book’s framework. By the basic plan, the project has been structured into three implementation phases.

Phase 1: The Making of Book on History of Alimosho: This entails Collation of the respective history of the ancient time communities within the geographical space of Alimosho, which have grown to becoming the different kingdoms that make up the conurbations of today’s Alimosho Federal Constituency. In the events, the information gathered about their, myths, beliefs and monuments are processed into a book of the Alimosho’s History. This is the origin and what makes the content source of the said book: Coming to Alimosho: the Economy, Politics and Cultural Origin of the County.

Phase 2: Translate the Collated Heritages into Work of Arts and Crafts: The collated heritages are to be recreated into works of art in sculptor and painting. And in the perfect vision from which the project was conceived, the sculptural works will include statues created out of the myths and beliefs or a recreation of an identified prominent physical monument, artifacts and antiquities found to be peculiar to every kingdom in Alimosho. Such statue shall then be erected at the strategic centre of the town, such as the Bacchus Park at the Isheri Olofin Roundabout in the case of Isheri Olofin’s Agbo D’ere symbol of the Kingdom.

Phase 3: Build Alimosho Crafts, Arts and Monuments Place (ACAMP): This is to create a central place where all the major and subsidiary works of art so created in phase 2 are warehoused and designated for Alimosho Arts Gallery. It will also host the photo gallery Alimosho heroes.

It should therefore be discernible from here that the formal public presentation of the consequential five-volume book is a statement of completion of a phase in the project.

            In the language of its general value, nevertheless, the totality of the book has been designed as information warehouse on Alimosho. It is a compass for business navigation as much a guide to life and living in the Local Government. The unique feature that make this so is the Volume 5, which makes the book’s content of Alimosho Streets Map (ASM). The overall outlook of ASM is as already described above.

           Pursuant to the vision statement, Project Alimosho Heritages also recognizes that there is history to come from the future as much as we have the past for history. Therefore, if the collation endeavour is as much about the personages of the past founder generation and historical events, the process of evolution of Alimosho to modernity today, particularly from the early years of the 20^th century to this era of 21^st century, must also have its own sets of rewardable personages of events.

            The question then is how will the future see their footprints on the sands of their times today? This is the question PAH tries to answer with the incorporation of Alimosho Hall of Fame (AHF).

           

Reviewing the Tourism Economy of Alimosho as Prospected By PAH

As a previous knowledge, culture is about food, dressing, dance, language and historical pedigree by way of the people’s ancestral origin. Through the volume segment of the book on tourism guide, which the ASM also serves, PAH dwells extensively into all these factors of culture in a way that engages the reader in a course of journey to real world of the events at the ancient time in comprehensive tale of graphic animation.

            In matters of food for instance, PAH gathered that elegede and woorowo vegetable (efo elegede) served with pounded yam is a peculiar delicacy of the natives of Ipaja natives that originated from Egbado. It was established that the mushroom vegetable as the core ingredient of the soup is a veritable material that links the ancient settlements of the Egbado clan in Ipaja to the Dahome war against the Yewa people, according to Tatalo Alamu, the Page 3 columnist of The Nation on Sunday. And so PAH queries: why would the contemporary Ipaja natives rather wish to allow their Yewa origin as symbolised by this delicacy go to extinct or be confined to a dead dogma? In other words, why should there not be Ose Elegede Woorowo celebrated annually?

However, projecting Alimosho for tourism potential is not about cultural opportunities derivable from Alimosho alone. According to the scope of the project, it extends to tapping into the collateral advantages in the LGA’s vintage geographical position as a potential important corridor in transit of tourists to the place of emerging tourism hob for which the Badagry axis is being developed by the State Government.

By the prescience that gave the PAH team a strong motivation for strict commitment to its implementation, Badagry will obviously emerge as a world-class tourism hob before the turn of two decades ahead.

The veracity of this projection exists in both the long term plan of the State Government and our personal survey conducted for this project. The latter revealed that beneath the polity of Badagry region, there is a huge deposit of cultures to be explored and developed for tourism. The empirical evidence would later be provided by Wale Adeniran that those “hidden cultures are of non-yoruba speaking people located in Badagry”. And as he put it: “Linguistically, they are Egun and Awori”. Thus curiously, PAH sees the gainful nexus of Alimosho as Awori Land to this opportunity in Badagry Division.

Adeniran went further to list the hidden cultures to include Uton, Ajalatopa, Zangbeto, Zangbolu, Atinga, Sapata, etc, etc. Analysing the traditional context of the cultures, he was able to give the feasibilities of gainful packaging of the cultures into timeline festivals of events for tourism activities.

Analysing the traditional context of the cultures, Adeniran was able to give the feasibilities of gainful packaging of the cultures into a timeline festivals of events for tourism activities. According to him, Uton is about snake dance. A festival of event branded on this mantra is bound to stand out. A festival of Musiwu Dance in which video coverage is strictly forbidden is bound to raise curiosity on which tourism thrives.

And going further to harp on their component curiosity that drives tourism economy, he raised these posers: Why should Zangbeto and Zangbolu be festivals of dance on sands only, which makes seaside more of their comfort one? What is the myth about the magical activities involved in the Zangbolu, which makes it more sophisticated than Zangbetto? How does Atinga Dance connect Lagos to Cotonou? And how does Atinga Dance invoke spirit of detecting crimes of adultery and witchcraft?

These are potential tourism festivals that are sure to emerge from the kitty of Lagos State tourism development plan in Badagry Division. The potential economic advantages of this are too enormous for Lagos State to jettison the required commitment to it.

Developing tourism around these hidden cultures is a big important source of Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) as Adeniran and other relevant stakeholders did note. “Badagry lies between Nigeria and other West African sub-region. People transitting could spend one or two nights to watch some interesting cultural performances” (Adeniran (2016).

It is on this same principle of ‘transit camp advantage that the expanded scope of this Project Alimosho Heritages is conceived on the matter of tourism...

Project Alimosho Heritages gets Operational Tool as Ambode Inaugurates Lagos Theatre

Story by Toyo C. Ngem

It was jubilation in the camp of Barlade Image Communications (B.I.C.) on Wednesday (15/05/2019), as Governor Akinwunmi Ambode delivered Alimosho’s leg of Lagos Theatre to the public.

The organisation had keenly looked forward to this event as the core content required from the side of government to deliver the set objectives of Project Alimosho Heritages (PAH).

In his speech for the event, Governor Ambode described Alimosho to be one of the five local governments that benefited from his administration’s “promise to create a new economy around tourism, hospitality, entertainment and sports”. Other local governments that host the remaining four Lagos Theatre are Badagry LGA, Ikeja LGA, Epe LGA and Ikorodu LGA.

But going down memory lane to connect this Lagos Theatre Hall to PAH, B.I.C. Director, Mrs. M. O. Shutti-Jimoh, said she “would have preferred this tourism edifice to be recognised as Alimosho Theatre Arts and Cultural Hall”.  She was however quick to state that she could reason with the State government’s explanation that such identity could be misconstrued to mean that the Theatre was built by Alimosho LGA, particularly when the future tendencies tilt more towards absolute demarcation between state’s and local government’s properties. Besides, as she said, “the identity matter only provides a gap the prospective PAH’s own edifice of Alimosho Cultural Arts and Monuments Place (ACAMP) would have to fill”.

Shutti-Jimoh went further to explain the conception origin and core objectives of PAH to establish their meeting points with the Lagos State’s policy directives on culture and tourism, which gave birth to the Lagos Theatre.

She said: “It may be emphasised here that B.I.C. idea of collating the monuments of Alimosho’s historical heritages only speaks the mind of Lagos State Government. The PAH’s objectives have their meeting points of concurrence with the policy directives of both the Executive and Legislative arms in paradigm shift on economy of tourism, entertainment and hospitality.

            “Not long ago yet in this administration of Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, the Lagos State House of Assembly passed a resolution on the same subject of the need to collate the historical monuments and centres in Lagos State for their imperative preservation for the future generations. Curiously, this came just about two years after the implementation of PAH had commenced and progressed significantly.

            “However, the relevance of that resolution to the value of PAH as conceived is that the importance of historical monuments is made only out of generational myths attached to historical subjects. For instance, in the context of the supporting motion raised for the issue at the purported plenary of Lagos Assembly, Carter Bridge and Epetedo on Lagos Island were specifically mentioned as foremost in the enlistment. But in reality, these two are respectively common place infrastructure and area people pass through daily without conscious notice of their historical values.

            “Carter Bridge is historically the first ‘modern’ bridge built to fly people across the Lagoon in link of Lagos Island to Mainland. But down memory lane, this may not be the only issue of interest about it much as the myth of a self-sacrificial pact between the builder contractor and the ‘goddess of Lagoon”.

            She explained the myths and situates same in the metaphor of Epetedo as the place where Chief MKO Abiola sealed a similar pact with goddess of Democracy for Nigeria.

She said: “Local history has it that as the bridge was being built, it would encounter destruction at a stage. Through a‘mysterious power’ of the contractor, as the tale goes, the goddess of the sea around the axis was discovered to be responsible for the destruction. Determined to do his works, the contractor was said to have dived into the bed of the sea to meet the goddess where a treaty of his death was signed if the goddess would allow the bridge to stay. The death was said to be by way of returning to the sea bed to live permanently with the goddess after completing the bridge.

            “Metaphorically, Epetedo could also be described as a place where the fate of Nigeria’s democracy was sealed into irreversible existence with the ‘death pact’ Chief MKO Abiola signed with the ‘goddess’ of democracy too: that he would sacrifice his life if democracy could be allowed to have its roots in Nigeria. This is so because it was place where Chief Abiola declared himself as the duly elected President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria on account of the results of June 12, 1993 Presidential election. For that action, he was arrested by the Military Government in power and imprisoned. He never returned from the prison alive”.

According to her, the import of this analysis in contexts of the purported Lagos Assembly’s Resolution was to say that the historical values of places, events and monuments from the ancient time of Alimosho will only come out when they are given the isolated documentation of their respective relevance of their times. “This is how PAH connects with the governance philosophy of the legislative arm of the Lagos State Government”, she said.

            Going further, she said “the coming of Governor Ambode to officially commission the Alimosho’s 500-audience capacity Lagos Theatre and Cinema also presupposes the meeting of the PAH’s objectives with the policy thrust of the Cabinet Office of the Lagos State Government. The inauguration implied the delivery of that iconic tourism infrastructure for undoubtedly the like of PAH’s prospective use”.

            She said it was “a good thing that Ambode delivered on his promise and we at B.I.C. should be the happiest people in Alimosho  to receive this gesture. You know why? While receiving the idea behind PAH, the Governor said this project (Lagos Theatre), would be delivered to Alimosho people year, though referring to 2018.

            “He told us never to be skeptical about that schedule because the fund had been captured in that year’s budget. It was for this reason that we had since kept vigil at the project site from January this year, monitoring the progress of works to completion. We did that because somehow, the fate of PAH’s further implementation progress is tied to it”.

           

Dupeolu Street in Pipeline Area of Idimu: the Narrative of its Origin from Humanity Cause

WHEN Chief (Mrs.) Modepuolu Oseni was shortlisted for a place in the Alimosho Hall of Fame (AHF), it was born out of the foreseeable impact Project Alimosho Heriatges read to the overall community value in her philanthropic gesture that opened up the once benighted slum area that became Dupeolu Street today. She was shortlisted along other women that included the former Lagos State Deputy Governor, Mrs.  Adejoke Orelope-Adefulire and the late Engr (Mrs) Comfort Olufunke Ponle of the famous Micom Empire in Akowonjo area of Egbeda. This post is thus simply becomes a vindicated testimony to the non-pecuniary influence in the assessment of issues of interest to the project.

Last Friday, displaced traders at the Pipeline mini grocery market in Idimu, Lagos, were yesterday full of praises for the woman, Modupeolu Oseni, as they found immediate place of settlement at the newly opened Dupeolu Street beside the market.

After the quit notice and reminders earlier served on the traders, the government’s bulldozer finally arrived at the small market to pull down both the valuable grocery stalls and the menacing containers that were springing up on the opposite side along the Idimu side of the Pipeline Way to make nuisance of the area. This page agrees that was one step to curbing the motion of Lagos to lawlessness from the continuous influx of migrant from other states, particularly the North and East.

But for this post, the subject interest is the eventual value the Dupeolu Street came handy to serve the displaced grocery traders and the entire Idimu/Community.

The Dupeolu Street evolved as the sole gain of philanthropic gesture of the Alhaja Modupeolu Oseni. But for the discernible minds, it is far more a reminder of the once benighted swampy and slump closed road the place was before the golden touch of the woman.

As late as 2017, the Barlade Street Map (BSM) captured the squalor site of the area as shown in this map. It was the reminiscence of the absurd and unplanned physical development that characterised the menace of Omo Onile (land owner’s) arbitrary land sales.

The squalor of the area had defied solutions for years with its progressive destructive impacts on the surrounding buildings. The new school on Olo Street was once a dreamed edifice of the original property owner, which was abandoned for the sinking and water logged impact the swamp the place had become. The states of the buildings opposite this school along the Dupeolu Street (see pix below) are the relics of that past that is suffice for the imagination of the destructive impact of the perennial flooding of the area from the isolated standing swamp. In fact it turned the otherwise Olo Street to Olo Close with a single entry from the Gbeleyi Street only.

Egbe Iidmu Local Council Development Area (LCDA) was established in 2004 when the whole Alimosho Local Government was unbundled into six LCDAs for the primary objective to fast track attention of the grassroots government to this type of ubiquitous problems. But 13 years after the LCDA birth became as at 2017, the slum yet remained the squalor of the Folaga Community Development Association. Curiously and much annoyingly, the purported Pipeline grocery market evolved as a value product of the LCDA’s early years of administration. Unfortunately, however, while the LCDA continued to reap revenue from the market, the Olo/Olugbede slum that made the eyesore to the market never got consideration for rehabilitation. Rather, it progressively degenerated to becoming the community’s refuse dump site that the market traders eventually turned it to.

From the testimonies of many residents of the Folaga CDA, including a renowned school proprietor in the area, the many save-our-soul letters sent to the Ministry of Environment at Alausa, the State Government’s Secretariat, never produced the desired result, even if it could come as a half-hearted measure from the government’s quarters.

All this have been stressed to underscore the adventure of Alhaja Oseni into the path where the angels of the State and local governments feared to tread.  The arrival of Oseni in the community of Folaga CDA was less than a decade old by the January 2017 when she picked the gauntlet to solely solve this many decades old problem.

While the rehabilitation works was a product of an engineer’s improvised lasting relief measure estimated to cost about N1.8million, the execution was through a direct labour of the community youths led by one Wasiu, Popular in the neighbourhood as ‘small landlord’. The product of that relief measure was the clearing of the squalor and sand/gravel filling that opened up the slum into an arterial access road by-pass to Egbeda-Idimu High Way since February 2017.

The next immediate value to be noticed upon completion of the project was an unfolding economic potential of the area, which had been hitherto locked down by the squalor. The set of shops built along the slum path to take advantage of the new Pipeline market as established were never occupied. But as soon as the Oseni’s gesture opened up the place, the vacant shops were occupied and the open land behind it was quickly developed into a market quadrangle of lock-up-shops.

However, the service value of the philanthropic project as arterial road was to become more noticeable when the construction of Gbeleyi Street as a continuum of Isiba Oluwo stretch from Orelope (at Egbeda end) became grounded at the Pipeline (Idimu end). Private and commercial vehicles made the newly opened Dupeolu Street the alternative access road pathway needed to beat the now routine slow and often traffic gridlock on the Egbeda-Idimu High Way. This is value purpose the grounded Gbeleyi Road is meant to serve.

All this notwithstanding, it was never envisaged that Dupeolu Street would ever come to serve this big social value of keeping the Pipeline Grocery Market in operation. The market is about the only wholesales source of vegetables (talking about peppers and tomato) and wholesome soup ingredients supply to the vast area of Idimu Community. The demolition thus became a matter of serious concern to all residents, virtually from Abuleodu to Arobaba/Agbogunleri sides of Oke-Idimu.

But the Dupeolu Street came handy to the rescue. The displaced traders rushed to quickly occupy positions on its sideway, leaving a narrow path for vehicular movement. Otherwise, the traders would have been dispersed eternally to permanently close the market. With the coming of Ramadan, the Muslim community served by this market would have to observe their one month-long food dependent fasting under stressful conditions.

In spite of these gainful values of Alhaja Oseni’s humanity cause with community development service, giving the place the identity ‘Dupeolu Street’ as named after her did not happen by her design. It was rather a consequence of mischievous move to rubbish her self-inspired cause from some quarters.

While a section of this group began to impute a notion that the kind gesture of over a million and half naira project was meant to serve the economic benefits of her prospective business, another section had begun to claim undue propriety for opening up the place. Of particular interest in the latter group’s regard was a supposed parade of the toilet/water sales manager in the market as such. She would later reluctantly bow to pressure from the agitation of some appreciative residents of the Folaga CDA that it was imperative for her to preserve the legacy in her name in the face of that early denial.

Chief (Mrs.) Modupeolu Oseni made her way to the preliminary list of Alimosho Hall of Fame as a bureaucrat – a civil servant -- caught in the rare garb of philanthropist and generous community builder per excellence. The more significant note about her humanity cause she had undertaken beyond the Dupeolu project in a revolutionary fashion thus far in her brief years of settlement in Idimu community is her preference for silence over her social value impacts.

While PAH attempted to ascribe this to imperative demands of her career culture, she said “it’s her cultural philosophy of charity by creed of discreet to preserve the integrity of the beneficiary so that the kind gesture shall add extra value of high esteem on the person”.