Welcome to Lagos...

Nigeria once again has a bee in its collective bonnet at its portrayal by foreign media. Towards the end of last year, Sony was forced into an apology to the Nigerian government and into changing one of their adverts after it managed to include a throwaway line about Nigeria and 419. To paraphrase "If I believed in everything I read on the Internet, I'd be a Nigerian millionaire."

Most Nigerians were furious, calling for a boycott of Sony products despite the fact online at least, Nigerians have a bad reputation. Sure not everyone in Nigeria is a Scammer or in the local parlance here Yahoo Yahoo boy, but at the same time, honest Nigerians have sat back and watched their reputation go down the toilet. These honest Nigerians are even complicit, albeit indirectly in the glorifying of 419. If you bought (stop laughing at the back there)Olu Maintain's Yahoozie can you not be said to be accepting of 419?

Why Nigerians were offended is beyond me. I will never forget about reading a magazine article about the 10 richest Nigerians and almost choked when I noticed the addition of the Abachas amongst others. Yes, in a list of businessmen and industrialists (some of whom might be a little shady themselves) the klepto Abacha family (Transparency international estimated that their looting ran into the billions of dollars) is included and then you want to come and act hurt and offended when Sony makes a fairly humourous comment?

I could spend all day getting sidetracked about idiotic stuff like this so lets move on to the actual topic of this blog. Last Thursday, the BBC (on BBC2) aired Welcome to Lagos. According to Will Anderson, the producer, the show is a 3 part series about the slums and ghettos in Lagos, Nigeria's largest city and in fact one of the largest cities in the world.

The first episode focused on the Olososun rubbish dump. Reviews and user comments have widely varied. While most of the Western people were impressed by the programme commenting on the work-ethic and can-do attitudes of the people who live on the dump and the stories of people like aspiring musician Vocal Slender. Many of them were shamed by it in fact. While the UK has dozens of people who would rather just live on benefits and do no work, this documentary showed people who didn't even have some of the opportunities your average London chav has and yet they carried themselves with self-respect and dignity.

Nigerians were however less impressed wondering why the BBC had to show the slum in the first instance.

Facebook statuses condemning Welcome to Lagos sprouted up like chacne on a steroid user. Anderson's producers blog on the BBC was swamped with angry messages from Nigerians in the UK most of whom managed to miss the point quite spectacularly. Pictures of 'upscale' areas like Victoria Island, Lekki and Ikoyi were frantically uploaded as if the existence of the good parts of Lagos somehow means Olososun or Ajegunle don't exist. Someone even posted a picture of Mega Plaza- Century 21 mall. Oh look, congratulations we have shopping. Are they still selling Super Nintendo games for almost full price still?

News programmes and documentaries are not about making things look good. One of the accusations thrown about was that in every documentary or news story about London there was a shot of London's shiny bits like Canary Wharf or the London Eye and nothing of Peckham and the like. Beyond the fact that it would be pointless showing Peckham in a piece that had nothing to do with it, do these people actually watch the news at all? UK TV is full of wonderful stories about how crappy the country is.

Baby P, Damilola Taylor, Knife Crime, Shannon Matthews, Honour killings ring any bells? Before I moved to London for my Masters in London, there was so much reporting about stabbings and knifings by hoodie-clad youths I began to think that London was overrun with feral children carrying knives looking to stab anything that moved.

Without having to reach into deep into my memory, there have been at least two pieces on 'weapon dogs' and gang culture on terrestial television- Sorious Samura of Cry Freetown fame even did one where young men in London talked candidly about linking chick in a documentary about gang rapes amongst youth (some as young as 14). So let it not be said that they have not looked at the log in their own eyes before looking at the specks in ours.

It is not the BBC's job to produce a tourism package showing The Palms or Lekki beach with some ambient music (or maybe some Fuji music, like how those tourism ads on CNN International have their traditional tunes in the background) in the background. That's the Lagos State government's job, and if they had any sense, they'd be producing something now to remind people that Lagos does have its good bits too.

I think this illustrates a few things including a difference in news and journalism culture. It is not uncommon in Nigeria for people and companies to buy airtime on television and basically air infomercials or public service announcement for 30 minutes. How many evenings in my youth were spent dozing off to Maritime today or an airing of some random person's 60th birthday party and thanksgiving service? Too many is the answer.

Some of the more measured responses online said they would wait to see if the programme was balanced before castigating it. They will probably be disappointed as the two remaining episodes show yet more slums (although it does seem like episode 3 will be set in to quote Anderson one of the "swankiest" places "close to the beach" so possibly Victoria Island or Lekki).

In truth, if they were to have brought the cameras to Victoria Garden City or the palms what would they have gotten. Would they have gotten rich made for tv characters like the aforementioned Vocal Slender? Or would they mostly find a quite pampered, chubby cheeked boy, usually called Junior, dressed head to toe in Nike or some other sports apparel designer swaggering around the place aimlessly with his friends. Actually, I'd quite like them go film at the Palms. Maybe they would get to the bottom as to why people feel the need to dress up to go get groceries from Shoprite.