Andrea Sonntag

Professor Gerard Dolmans

IIS 145 W21 5270 - African Study: Diversity

February 23, 2021

Response #4

The producers of the 2010 BBC TV series “Welcome to Lagos” could have chosen to

showcase some of the many successful grassroots movements that abound in the city, or one of

the tech initiatives empowering their youth to develop new skills (Bourdain), or maybe the

economic potential of a state that is responsible for one third of the country’s GDP (Piling).

Instead, the focus of the documentary was on the 60% of the population who live in abhorrent

conditions and their struggles against being wiped off the face of the earth by a government

determined to ignore their plight. It is a fact that the majority of Lagosians subsist in makeshift

“villages” – according to a World Bank report, two thirds of the population live in abject poverty

(“The World Bank in Nigeria - Overview”). That is a fact impossible to ignore, but what angered

the Nigerians who watched the show the most according to journalist Adaobi Nwaubani’s article

for The Guardian, was the public humiliation caused by, no less, their former colonial exploiters.

She goes on to say “image does matter tremendously in our part of the world. Perceived flaws

automatically put a family or tribe in a position of disadvantage” (Nwaubani).

Nigerian writer and Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, defined the portrayal as

“condescending” and “colonialist” and the outcry was reverberated worldwide by others

(Dowell). The government of Lagos even sent a formal complaint to BBC asking the network to

“repair the damage we believe this series has caused to our image". Nwaubani notes that their
instinct was to blame the BBC instead of apologizing for the visible suffering they inflicted on

their own population (Nwaubani).

Caught between the world’s opinion, and the Lagos Megacity Project put forth by the

Nigerian government, are the hordes of people who live in squalor while everyone debates

Nigeria’s image. Reading between the lines, it is clear that what the Lagosians who were

featured in the show fear the most is having their meager possessions and shacks taken away or

destroyed while the city becomes what writer OluTimehin Adegbeye calls it in her 2017 TED

Talk “Who Belongs in a City”, the new Dubai. Adegbeye goes on to say, with great support from

her audience, that “you don’t need to be the new Dubai when you are already Lagos”, showing

an uncanny pride in her heritage. There are great African success stories but Nigerian terrorism

such as Boko Haram “has blocked the boomtown narrative from the world’s consciousness like a

lunar eclipse” (Draper).

The most striking aspect of the documentary, in my opinion, is that you will not see

Lagosians demanding better sanitation, health care, or protesting corruption on the streets of

Lagos – they just want to be left alone to carry on with their lives, no matter how humble their

circumstances. Throughout the show, we can see examples of the underlying themes of

traditional African society outlined in “Understanding Contemporary Africa” by April and

Donald Gordon. Residents of the Olusosun wasteyard demonstrate the importance of kinship,

family values, hard work, and humility. As an update, the refuse dump, which is still home to

millions of Nigerians, now stretches all the way to the city, and has a hospital and a primary

school, but is projected to be shut down by 2022 (Sieff), a project that does not account for the

impact on the people who will be made homeless. That could create a wave of refugees who will

either flood other cities or countries causing yet another migrant crisis in Africa.
 The hard reality is that the population of Lagos grew by 4.4 million since the

documentary and it is projected to hit 24.4 million by 2035 (“Lagos Population 2021”). Contrary

to what one would imagine, Financial Times writer David Piling sees this as a positive fact and

states that “the huge population gives it the scale other African capitals lack”. He goes on to

qualify Lagos as a potential economic rival to some Asian capital cities (Piling). Overpopulation

may be a curse according to pessimists, but time will tell how Lagos will handle their challenges.

Featured in both the BBC show and the 2017 Lagos episode of Anthony Bourdain’s

“Parts Unknown”, were the so-called “Area Boys” - youth gangs who control the streets through

bribery, coercion, and extortion. In spite of the gruesome images of the Lagos cattle market and

street fighters featured in Bourdain’s show, he describes Lagosians as “perhaps the hardest-

working, most enterprising, most optimistic population I’ve ever encountered. The food and the

music are a reflection of that vitality and strength” (Bourdain). His show also succeeds in one of

the points where the BBC documentary failed by showcasing the positive influence of companies

such as Andela, a group that trains Nigerians to become the new generation of software

engineers and developers. Their youth, who seem to have a multitude of jobs concurrently and

are incredibly resourceful, could offer serious competition to Western people entering the tech

market. In Bourdain’s interview with journalist Kadaria Ahmed, she stated “I hate to come to

this show and talk Nigeria down because you hear these things all the time” (Bourdain), which

echoes the sentiment in Chimamanda Adichie’s 2009 TED Talk “The Danger of a Single Story”.

In other words, there are so many positive aspects of Nigerian resilience we all could learn from,

why continue to showcase their handicaps for the world to see? Mark Eddo shares this same

opinion, which he made clear during his 2015 Ted Talk “as a journalist, what always irks me is

the perception of Africa through the international media” (Eddo, 00:07:58)

shameful, what I saw was the resourcefulness of people who have almost no possessions but

don’t seem to give up or be affected by the apathy that some of us feel towards life. That should

be the most important takeaway for the rest of us. It is very important to remember that if you

search for current events regarding any place on earth, you are likely to find the worst possible

news because that is what sells as far as the mass media goes. We all owe it to the world to dig

deeper, to not let bad news eclipse the positive facts, and to make sure we do not believe the

single story.
Works Cited

Adichie, Ngozi. “The Danger of a Single Story.” Ted Talk, uploaded by Ted Talk, 1 July 2009,

www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.

Bourdain, Anthony. “Bourdain’s Field Notes: Lagos.” Explore Parts Unknown, 12 Oct. 2017,

explorepartsunknown.com/lagos/bourdains-field-notes-lagos.

Dowell, Ben. “Wole Soyinka Attacks BBC Portrayal of Lagos ‘Pit of Degradation.’” The

Guardian, 1 July 2020, www.theguardian.com/media/2010/apr/28/soyinka-bbc-lagos-

documentaries-criticism.

Draper, Robert. “How Lagos Has Become Africa’s Boom Town.” Magazine, 10 Feb. 2021,

www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/lagos-nigeria-africas-first-city.

Eddo, Mark. “A New Narrative for Africa | Mark Eddo | TEDxOslo.” YouTube, uploaded by

TEDx Talks, 13 Feb. 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVKlWINwf54.

“Lagos Population 2021 (Demographics, Maps, Graphs).” Lagos Population, 2021,

worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/lagos-population.

Nwaubani, Adaobi Tricia. “Does Nigeria Have an Image Problem?” BBC News, 26 June 2014,

www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-28015962.

---. “Nigeria’s Anger at the BBC’s Welcome to Lagos Film.” The Guardian, 1 July 2020,

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/may/06/nigeria-response-bbc.

“OPEC: Nigeria Facts and Figures.” OPEC, 2020,

www.opec.org/opec_web/en/about_us/167.htm.

Pilling, David. “Nigerian Economy: Why Lagos Works.” Financial Times, Financial Times, 25

Mar. 2018, www.ft.com/content/ff0595e4-26de-11e8-b27e-cc62a39d57a0.

21 Nov. 2017, www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/the-world-is-drowning-in-ever-

growing-mounds-of-garbage/2017/11/21/cf22e4bd-17a4-473c-89f8-

873d48f968cd_story.html.

“The World Bank in Nigeria - Overview.” World Bank, 3 Nov. 2020,

www.worldbank.org/en/country/nigeria/overview.

“Welcome to Lagos” Producer Will Anderson. Director Gavin Searle.  British Broadcasting

Corporation, 15 Apr. 2010.  Vimeo, https://vimeo.com/11206466. Accessed 23 Feb.

2021.