Derek Oakley and Kevin Munday in Abuja, Nigeria for the Commonwealth Youth Programme’s Africa Regional Youth Caucus.

Derek Oakley and Kevin Munday are in Abuja, Nigeria for the Commonwealth Youth Programme’s Africa Regional Youth Caucus. They will be blogging daily on the CYEC website about their experiences.

Friday 12th March – “You are welcome”

We both arrived in Abuja at 5.30am after a night flight. A combination of good films, plane food and a few hours sleep meant we were raring to go. We had a very warm welcome from Commonwealth Youth Programme and Nigerian Department of Youth Development staff and were soon whizzing down the motorway to the centre of the capital. We was surprised to see the roads so busy at 6am, but were told the city has grown so quickly that those in the suburbs get up as early as 4am to make sure they can get through the traffic to arrive at work on time. Although lots of new homes are being built, this is having an impact on both the transport infrastructure and amount of green space around the city.

Kevin has been to Nigeria before and has noticed a few other things have changed since he was last here in 2003. Access to the internet has opened up. In 2003 we were going to the business centre in the Hilton Hotel every time we wanted to send an email. Now access is common, with some of the cafes we went into having WiFi and 24 hour access in our hotel rooms for a very affordable £4. There are also a lot more ATMs, a sign perhaps of the greater disposable cash many Nigerians have.

One thing that has stayed the same is the very warm welcome from the Nigerian people. Many people pause to have a chat and find out why we are here, always with a reminder that “you are welcome”. Kevin went out to buy a sim card for his phone and was led through the process by a local woman who was very forgiving of his lack of technological prowess. Telecommunications is a big deal here, with over 50 million mobiles in usage, compared to just 3 million land lines. Almost every Nigerian in the city has at least two phones, one of which is likely to be state of the art. Derek got to try an Oxtail for lunch, much to the amusement of the cafe staff. More of it ended up on his face and t-shirt than in his mouth, but he says it was very good.

We’ve had a quiet day today, whilst most of the young people from around Africa begin to arrive. But of course it hasn’t been all leisure, with us both preparing our sessions to be delivered tomorrow. Kevin is facilitating some activities around how to take forward the outcomes of the Commonwealth Youth Forum which was held in Trinidad and Tobago last autumn. Derek, together with Esther from the Nigerian Climate Change Coalition, is facilitating a session on climate change.

We met up with Esther and one of her colleagues Tawio this afternoon and worked on the sessions. We all agree that the biggest challenge is moving from all of the recommendations written in communiqués to actions that make a difference for people around the Commonwealth. Of course, this is really hard and we certainly don’t have all of the answers ourselves, but hopefully we can help facilitate others to start to think about it. After planning, Esther and Tawio took us out for the evening, Nigerian-style. Kevin and Taiwo were very excited to realise that they had both been at the CYF in Abuja in 2003.

One of the nicest things about visiting a country where you know some local people is seeing what real life is like without a tourism spin. We had a fantastic night out, trying local Nigerian foods and listening to the latest Nigerian RnB. It’s now time for bed, we have a busy day tomorrow.