Why Lagos is a Hustle.
Beyond CPMS at 21, to cultural heritage management.
A concerted effort
Recently, I spent a week on assignment in Lagos to mark the 21st anniversary of CPMS Nigeria Ltd: A Lagos based project management firm. This is first in a series of Project Management (*PM) Futures: An annual event that recognises collaboration as a gatekeeper to issues that stretch beyond bounds of a single group.
“If you want to go quickly, go alone; if you want to go further, go together” — An African Proverb
This assignment, commissioned by Engr. Bayo Adeola chairman of CPMS Nigeria Limited, is the culmination of a book publishing project. Bayo Adeola wrote Principles and Practice of Project Management. He invited a design team to curate a user-first experience for PM Futures, held at MUSON (Musical Society of Nigeria), a concert and talk venue in Onikan, Lagos. As the book went to press, we managed brand identity, digital content, print production (by Tunde Oyewole) and event-stage-design (by Theo Lawson’s Lagos based firm of Architects: Total Consult), for PM Futures.
This is a concerted effort that went further than a unilateral hustle could go to generate possibilities, evaluate alternatives and make decisions. A common purpose: user-first conversations was critical. Investing in this soft side is worth the effort, to productively channel personal preferences through the lens of users.
This garden is evocative.
MUSON resides where Love-Gardens once lived in Onikan. It’s a slice of Lagos Island, a place teeming with historical significance.
Lagos-Island without its historical centre is a place without memory. The Brazilian quarter has roots in Lagos’s history of colonial rule and its connection to the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. ‘Returnees’ with names like Vera Cruz and Da Costa rub shoulders with 18th-century Brazilian architectural styles found in baroque-doorways, ornamented-windows and floral-plaster-motifs. We don’t have samples of items left or lost by early settlers or Lagosians of Brazilian descent. Each object would be so evocative: How it is crafted, handled, treasured by someone.
MUSON sits on the edge of the Brazilian quarter. It is private in that its audience attend events by invite. However, it’s technically public. One end of its garden framed by pots of palm-trees lead to bus-stops along The Marina. The other end opens to the City Mall. Both ends are publicly accessible by a short east-west spine road.
A day before the event
Surely, heritage which is meaningful is that with meaning to the people it belongs to.
A group of us beeline for the Agip-recital hall at MUSON. Gardeners weed border shrubs. The grounds are a short-cut for the public, between the City Mall and the Marina. Outside the complex, hawkers selling groceries hustle.
By the corner of my eye, an unassuming gentleman strolls within a few yards of an archway. Just as he moves opposite a figurative wall mural I focus on him. I let him know the geometric pattern and colour of his Ankara lend a contrast to the mural. He smiles good-naturedly. How concerts are meticulously built up through weeks of painstaking study and days of rehearsal, all realised in a few hours of performance is not lost on me as I find out who he is.
He is Emeka Nwokedi, Director of Music at MUSON.
“It can reach people through music; it can change attitudes through music; it can change peoples mind set through music.” — Emeka Nwokedi on Nigerian Classics.
Afrobeat and Afrobeats are local notes with universal appeal. They barely scratch the surface of an expansive cultural-heritage topography, from Osun-Osogbo to the Brazilian quarter.
Scenes in the mind
The beauty of a functional partnership is this: it has defined areas of expertise where partners’ strengths are invaluable. A partnership that holds two or more ideas in opposition at the same time and retain its ability to imagine will see possibilities. So, hustle and well curated projects are not antithetical to structured creativity.
My mind wanders to a fictional edition of CPMS PM Futures in partnership with World Monuments Fund and UNESCO at CcHub Yaba. A team — heritage practitioners, software-engineers and data-scientists from Andela, project-managers, designers and research-anthropologists amongst others — standardise and centralise data about the Brazilian quarter. Over a two day hackathon, they use field-research and archesproject.org to map pedestrian accessibility in the quarter.
They produce an inventory of heritage-artefacts, a timeline of available imagery, and damage assessment of heritage-artefacts and buildings.
“Not ignoring the past and the horrors that happened here, but acknowledging it and turning it into something hopeful” — Dr. Rebecca Jones on Freedom Park, (a historical landmark in Lagos).
They incorporate data from multiple sources including UNESCO world heritage committee, local and international knowledge-bases into one inventory.
“How often — South Africa excepted — does one encounter a historic prison transformed into a Freedom Park, with a theatre implanted where the gallows once stood!” — Professor Wole Soyinka.
On day two they demo a prototype: a pilot scale heritage conservation district project within the quarter.
Their audience: policy makers, civic society and impact investors.
“We should read history not to loose ourselves in the past but to set high goals for our own achievement” — Henry-Russell Hitchcock.
Problem solving strivers: a hustle.
Once we make our way into the recital hall: I have a concern. I realise fixed stage-lighting and audio-visual systems don’t function. Colleagues from Theo Lawson’s practice assure us: it’s under control. By dawn, they stretch fabric over stage-props, install lighting and audio visual equipment. This is why problem solving strivers thrive in Lagos, whenever a structural-gap opens up possibilities.
CPMS at 21
The theme of this PM Futures event ‘CPMS @ 21: Actualising Visions with Projects’ spoke to cross-sector perspectives. It brought together a keynote address from the Deputy Governor of Ogun State Engr. Noimat Salako-Oyedele, an overview by Joseph Tegbe of KPMG. Perspectives on PM came from Aliyu Aziz (DG: National Identity Management Commission), Ronke Adeola (Film-Maker: Awani Documentary) and Biodun Otunola (Oshodi Transport Interchange). And a review of Principles and Practice of Project Management by Obafemi Onasile (President: Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveyors).
A project stood out, its value-chain and potential for collaboration are visible: Ronke Adeola reflects on AWANI (a documentary that examines the role of Nigerian women, pre-colonial Nigeria to the present day). She considers project management (or production management) as key to delivery of any film or television production.
It seems AWANI’s production functioned within an ad-hoc ecosystem, where people hustle across roles (writer; producer; director of photography and an editor, to name a few), health and safety, and planning.
Take-away
As an independent film-maker I recognise Ronke Adeola calls in different parts of her social-network and film-making value-chain: It’s a hustle. Everyone who contributes to Awani provides a type of value; advisory, financial, artistic, technological or creative. It is critical to appreciate that this value-chain does not demonstrate how revenue from Awani flows. Rather, it demonstrates how value is reeled in at various stages during the production of AWANI.
I can see Ronke Adeola working with project partners to transform existing ad-hoc ecosystems which support production for film and TV. Watch this space.
A long view
It’s the golden hour as we leave the Island via The Third Mainland Bridge. The squalor — whose inhabitants must adapt to thrive amidst all the challenges thrown at them — that envelopes Lagos-Island recedes into a sprawling silhouette. Super-wealthy enclaves of Lekki and Banana Island glimmer in the distance, whilst fishing community: Makoko, shacks built on stilts in a fetid lagoon emerge into view.
The Brazilian quarter’s squalor aesthetic is likely a pressing social-policy issue for public authorities. There will be perspectives: political, governance, commercial, technology and legal frameworks to consider. Navigation of uncertainties facing conservation efforts within the quarter comes to mind. Otherwise we might as well perform structural work to a building refurbishment without scaffolding. We need to be sensitive to how we listen and respond — as to content. There is culture: values and behaviour, behind the hustle to consider.
An edition of *PM Futures by CPMS could invite perspectives to ensure a clear value chain and collaborative possibilities are visible. A hustle culture needs to be kept on track by professional facilitation skills.
Where hustle is a virtue or not, collaboration is essential to creative projects.
What’s project management go to do with it?
Case studies in Principles and Practice of Project Management may provide readers with a view: Impact that rigorous PM has on collaboration, for accidental managers.
‘..“Hustle”: the street savviness Nigerians must master to avoid all manner of misfortune from bad luck and bad policemen to bad intentions of fellow Nigerians with a hustle of their own.’ — Elnathan John
*PM — Project Management.
