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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nNigerians are not generally known to be outdoor lovers – the weather is very hot in the north and quite humid in the south.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, there is a burgeoning community of hikers around Abuja inspired by the many expatriates living in the political capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The coronavirus pandemic has also had a part to play in encouraging these young middle-class Nigerians to explore the hills in the country’s rocky central region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The lockdown, which prevented people from travelling elsewhere, has meant that places closer to home are being explored.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The area around Mpape, which means “rock” in the local Gwari language, supplied much of the stone used to transform Abuja from a small village in the 1980s into the country’s capital city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The quarry has existed for more than 10 years,” said Mpape resident Courage Ebenz, who is somewhat bemused by the sudden influx of city-dwellers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nigeria has an abundance of sites of natural beauty, but this “man-made” location has its own appeal – with three main tiers that each give a stunning view of the water below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sightseers can choose a small winding footpath to the top terrace, where the grass is an ideal picnic location.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The more adventurous can continue down the path that circles and snakes down to the water’s edge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But a warning for the brave who might want to plunge into the water – the locals say it is full of abandoned machinery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Abraham Adepelumi, a geo-physicist at Obafemi Awolowo university, the lake was formed as a result of the fracturing of an aquifer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Once the rock got fractured, the water within the rock was under pressure,” he told the BBC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “It is a natural phenomenon, Mpape is a fracture-prone area of Abuja and has experienced tremors as recent as 2018.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n The local emergency agency has warned amateurs against hiking at Mpape Crushed Rock, but fun-seekers seem not to be deterred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I didn’t know we had such a place in Nigeria and I wanted to see if it is real,” Elizabeth Okute, who came with her friends after seeing pictures on Facebook, told the BBC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I am surprised such a place exists in Abuja and I love what I am seeing,” said Ann Chukwuka.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Emeka Uko, who kept straying to the edge much to the chagrin of his friends, added: “I hope we put measures in place to preserve it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is exactly what some volunteers decided to do last Saturday, clearing up a trail of plastic waste around the quarry that has built up over the last few weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They split into two groups to compete to see who could collect the most rubbish – updating social media as they went.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “A lot of people felt it was their responsibility to clean up the place,” Brandon Akume, whose group came second in the clean-up dash, told the BBC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This was an alien concept to most Nigerians, he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He moved from one group of picnickers to the other, handing out rubbish bags, instructing people to dispose of their litter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “They want to poison this place, it seems I have my work cut out for me,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BBC – Photos by Fatima Muhammad and words by the BBC’s Nduka Orjinmo An abandoned quarry in Nigeria has become a tourist hotspot after images were posted on social media earlier this month. The rocky…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[733,732,440],"class_list":["post-2628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment-art-culture","tag-abuja-beauty-spot","tag-mpape","tag-tourism"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/towncryyers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/a3.jpg?resize=976%2C549&ssl=1\")
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