I must confess that I was bitter and still a little bit bitter when the 'Welcome to Lagos' documentary on BBC2 preview came up on my TV screen. The first question I asked and I believe all Nigerians should ask is -'who gave the BBC crew visa to enter the country and shoot the documentary?'. I'm so sure the BBC would have requested for visas to enter the country and would also have brought in their equipment and gadgets for the shoot/documentary, so questions should have been asked by the Nigeria officials about their mission and what exactly they had come to Nigeria to do. This absolutely calls for concern because the UK Border officials would never have allowed NTA to come and shoot the 'slum-side' of the UK. If they won't allow us to do this in their country, why should we allow them to come over to Nigeria and show our bad side to the whole world? BBC should run documentaries on successful people in Nigeria too instead of going about looking for 'Naija' dump-sites!
The beauty of the documentary stems for the fact that the characters of the documentary played a prominent role through their narration even though their was still a voice-over. I felt proud to be a Nigerian because despite the fact that the government would never provide for its citizens, we will do anything(the right-way) to carve a niche for ourselves even if it means making a living out of a dump- site!
Special thanks to BBC for making the whole world realise that Nigerians would always notice a gap in any business through which profit can be made.
NTA and other TV stations in Nigeria should take a cue from this on how proper documentaries can done instead of making documentaries that normally lures one to sleep(NTA please take note!)
N.B: Had to do this post in a rush, I've got loads of essays to write and I just had to put this up before it flies away from my head. Please, bear with me if this post is full of errors because I won't be proof-reading!
9 comments:
Tired of all them BBC and CNN's show of the dark side of africa...always wonder why they can never write about the successful people.
Thanks for stopping by my blog and she sure cannot wait to start blogging
I must be the only one who hasn't seen that documentary. N i've passed by clips of it a couple of times on FB. Will def check it out now.
All d best with essays. You rounding up programme?
Nahh, not much typos (at least), else, woulda FINISHED YOU!Haha!
I need to see this documentary
I can see you're vexed. No vex. God dey and good luck with the essays.
The thing is, I am not sure if any of our TV stations would be interested in documentary whether to help tell a story not from the angle of a single story to challenging status-quo to bring about necessary changes. Do not be surprised if BBC do get dully signed approval somehow, somewhere b4 doing the documentary.
I havent seen it either. Should find time to go through it. Thanks for stopping my my blog. xox
Aburo, great post even when done in a rush!I like your straight talk.
True, the documentary shows the resilience of Nigerians. But on the 2nd part shown yesterday, I actually snoozed off 10 minutes into it, the oh 'they are so resilient' started to wear thin and in fact grate on my nerves.
I am with you on the one-sided view of this documentary. Nothing wrong with making an honest living out of a life so hard and I admire the xters, but at least show the yuppies and get their views on Lagos living too!
I am already getting some weird looks from my colleagues - and I'm thinking: I hope what I think they're thinking is not what they 're thinking. Lol.
Hope ur good with all the college work.
K..Point taken
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