I'm from Ibadan in south-west Nigeria, and the historical site I've always wanted to visit is the old walled city of Benin, in the south of the country. I'm a mechanical engineer and I travel a lot for work, but somehow I've never made it there.
What I know about it comes mainly from school and from documentaries I've watched. Centuries ago, Benin City was the capital of a powerful kingdom, and it was surrounded by enormous earth walls and moats, which some historians think were longer than many famous walls elsewhere in the world. Very little of them is left now, but you can still see sections. The city was also famous for its bronze sculptures, which were made by skilled guilds of craftsmen. There's still a royal palace and a street where bronze casters work using traditional methods.
The main reason I want to go is that I feel I've neglected my own country's history. I've visited old buildings in Europe on work trips and read every information board, but I've never seen this place, which is just a few hours from my home. That feels a bit wrong to me.
I'm also curious from an engineering point of view. I'd love to see what's left of the earthworks and imagine how people organised such a huge project without machines. And I'd really like to watch the bronze casters at work, because the idea of a skill being handed down for hundreds of years in the same street fascinates me. I'm hoping to take my son there during his next school holiday, so he grows up proud of where he comes from.