BBC Documentaries on Lagos/Nigeria

(I have my friend Parakeet to thank for inspiring me to bother to write down my feelings about this...)


The BBC seems to be taking an unlikely interest in Nigeria lately. It has aired two programmes recently titled: "Welcome to Lagos" and "The New Kings of Nigeria". Both were seemingly uninformed, dishonest, misleading and condescending re both titling and content.

The problem with the BBC, CNN, Sky News, UK, the Western world generally is what Chimamanda Adichie referred to as the "single story" which, to my mind, translates into the arrogant and willful reduction of a complex set of events into a single (and often incorrect) notion. Welcome to Lagos was obviously an errorneous and grandiose title for a scripted look at a remote aspect of Lagos life. In fact, a look at the traffic jams in Lagos would have been more representative. There was a scene in this nonsensical programme where the narrator talks about the chronic electricity issues but unfortunately for him the lights were on, so he just faded the picture and switched to the following day!

Similarly, the New Kings of Nigeria was grossly misleading. I wanted to watch the programme because i thought it was going to be about the new, emerging middle class of entrepreneurs, self-made young people and professionals making it happen in Lagos against all the odds but instead got an idiotic portrayal of an insignificant Nigerian.

I don't actually mind the characters/people shown on both programmes...one can identify or empathize with most of them...its the BBC i have an issue with. You won't find the BBC doing programmes on Soyinka, Gani, Emeagwali or Fashola or even on the atrocities of Shell & Western pharmaceutical companies in Nigeria and other African countries nor on the part that the British establishment continues to play in the intentional underdevelopment of Nigeria and other places on earth! Neither will you find programmes on the ongoing Eko Atlantic City project (see video here) on the BBC!!!

Anyway, the BBC is a state-owned and state-controlled TV channel so can't expect too much from it. We have to tell our own stories and choose/work to improve our collective situation.

Yours,