LAGOS, Nigeria — Officials here are embarking on a costly drive to revamp Nigeria’s power sector as the government struggles to keep the lights on.

After months of delays and political maneuverings, the government of Africa’s largest oil producer approved this month a plan to allocate over $5 billion in emergency funding to repair its power sector. The money is slated to come from the country’s excess crude-oil account. It’s a huge outlay, accounting for some 40% of the rainy-day fund’s current value of $13.5 billion.

The new spending program underscores a realization among top officials about the extent of Nigeria’s power problems. Many analysts consider the lack of reliable power the biggest impediment to economic growth in Nigeria — bigger even than the estimated annual loss of billions of dollars in oil revenues to smuggling and corruption.

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Part 5 of 5 of my series for Slate

LAGOS, Nigeria—Did you ever wonder what happened to that clunky 12-inch television you used to watch Seinfeld on? Or to that old CD player you wore out in the ’90s listening to Pearl Jam and P.M. Dawn? There’s a decent chance it ended up here, on the western outskirts of Lagos, in West Africa’s biggest electronics market, Alaba International.

Franklin Azubuike wants you to know that your old appliances are doing fine. And, by the way, thank you.

According to Azubuike, public affairs officer for the Alaba secretariat, the market’s 3,000 shops sell “anything electronic within the imagination of any man” to more than 300,000 people every single day. During the holiday season, the numbers are much, much higher.

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Part 4 of 5 of my series for Slate

LAGOS, Nigeria—Lunch hour in downtown Lagos. Bankers and secretaries stream out of their offices toward fast-food joints with names like Mr. Biggs, Tastee Fried Chicken, and Tantalizers. Others hustle toward food stands overseen by women with powerful forearms.

I sit on a rickety wooden bench at one of the stalls, waiting for a waitress to bring me a soda water and spicy jollof rice.

A few men chat nearby. They’ve kept their suit jackets on despite the midday sun, and they aren’t sweating. Their shirts and pants are crisp and clean. They are sporting cufflinks, and pocket squares, and tie bars. They laugh and nudge each other when a group of young women enters the food stall to order pounded yams. The women look them up and down and give slight, approving grins: The men are well-put-together; they deserve smiles.

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Part 3 of 5 of my series for Slate

LAGOS, Nigeria—Leo Igwe is a lonely man. In this overwhelmingly religious country, he is a rare creature. Leo is a proud, “out,” practicing atheist.

This is no small feat in a country where people answer the question, “How are you?” with, “I thank God.” Leo’s outspokenness has made him well-known but largely disliked in his home town on the northern outskirts of Lagos. It has also put his life in danger.

“I get death threats all the time,” Leo told me when I first met him several months ago. “What can I do? I believe what I believe.”

Death threats over religious matters are taken seriously in Nigeria, a country with a long and troubled history of religious violence. Particularly in the country’s “middle belt,” between its predominantly Muslim north and mostly Christian south, religious violence is easily triggered and dangerously volatile.

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Part 2 of 5 of my series for Slate

LAGOS, Nigeria—Taye paddles us between the stilt-borne homes. Women glide by in canoes on their way to the market, men on their way to sea. Small children paddle themselves to school. They look at me warily, and I try to return their gaze, but my eyes still sting. The smoke from the cars grinding their way across the 7-mile-long bridge toward the city center has crept across the lagoon and gotten into my clothes, nose, and eyes.

It is morning in Makoko, a slum neighborhood in Lagos, Nigeria, built above lagoon water fetid with pollution and industrial and human waste. Men and women fish from dugout canoes as they have done for centuries. They also have two or three cell phones, each from a different service provider, which they use according to which mobile network is functioning best that day.

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