ABUJA: Guests poured in through an entry gate on the ground floor of a castle.

Inside, vendors dressed as medieval court jesters sold balloons.

At Magicland, a privately owned theme park in Nigeria`s capital, Abuja, the country`s recurrent crises from galloping inflation to armed insurgencies fade into the background, at least for one afternoon.

Nigeria`s fragile middle class has been battered by two years of soaring prices amid the country`s worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation. At Magicland, one content creator from Borno state where international headlines typically centre on jihadist attacks filmed TikTok dances as a brightly coloured big wheel towered behind her.

Others took to the carnival rides, including 26-year-old public healthworker Mary Adeleke, who said she`d once been an adventurous person. `But as I grew up, with how the country`s structured and allthe struggles,Ilostthatpart of me,` she said, adding she was on a quest to regain it, one roller coaster at a time.

The west African nation is, by some metrics, a success story: a tech powerhouse, a major exporter of global cultural staples like Afrobeats, and the continent`s leading oil producer. But rampant inflation, a cost of living crisis and continued insecurity have proven hard for much of the country`s 228 million people.

Walking out of a swinging pendulum ride, Victor Bamidele, 28, offered a review.

`I thought it was something that would take my soul out of my body,` the medical device supplier said in typically colourful Nigerian English.-AFP