Nigeria has to turn the Lekki Toll Gate into our own Trafalgar Square or Statue of Liberty

Ayo Akinfe

(1) Our national anthem says: “The labours of our heroes past shall never be in vain.” We need to put these words into action and not let the heroes and heroines of the Lekki Toll Gate die in vain

(2) Governor Sanwoolu should turn the toll gate into a symbol of Nigerian democracy and make it a global tourist attraction like London’s Trafalgar Square or New York’s Statue of Liberty

(3) Admiral Horatio Nelson’s column adorns Trafalgar Square. He is such a national hero in Britain because it was his victory over the combined French and Spanish fleets in 1805 at the Battle of Cape Trafalgar in Spain that gave the country the world’s most powerful navy. Following this victory, Britain went on to become the world’s leading maritime and colonial power

(4) In the US, the Statue of Liberty was handed over to the Americans by the French on October 28, 1886 to mark their independence from the British in 1776

(5) If you look all over the world, there are similar symbols of people’s struggle for freedom, which stand today as sources of great national pride. I look at the Great Wall of China, the Brandenburg Gate, the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal, the Pyramid of Giza, etc and I see a people’s history

(6) Up until now, Nigeria had no such unifying edifice that symbolises our fight for freedom and democracy but thankfully we now do. We have to turn the Lekki Toll Gate into an international tourist attraction that can match any similar edifice on earth

(7) First of all, the toll gate bit needs to be moved away from the current location to make way for major construction projects

(8) We then need to erect a plaque on which we will inscribe the Lekki Toll Gate Declaration. It will serve as a document similar to the US Bill of Rights, the French Tennis Court Oath or the British Magna Carta

(9) We then need to build a statue to symbolise the bodies of the heroes and heroines who fell there. We could even put it on top of an Eiffel Tower kind of structure

(10) Along with this we then need hotels, cafes, memorabilia, bars, fair grounds, etc. Our aim should be to get the Lekki Memorial Park to at least match Egypt’s Valley of Kings or South Africa’s Kruge National Park in terms of tourists over the next three years. Over to you Governor Sanwoolu!