Peppered goat, Star beer and fried yams arrived in minutes. The “Kill me Quick” gin took only a little longer. The Code Red Night Cruise Experience had begun. Run by an ex-soldier named Comrade Momoh, the bar makes an almost miraculous appearance when his friends feel like swapping familiar Friday night haunts in uptown Lagos for a taste of the city’s livelier underbelly.

Stimulants for stomach and mind arrive from unseen sources, plastic chairs are produced, and Momoh slips on an Afrobeat CD by a Nigerian idol, the late Fela Kuti. “Water have no enemy,” he sings to clashing brass, and people start dancing. For a glimpse of the city that business visitors often miss, it is not a bad place to start.