Corona Diaries of the Urban Poor; Grassroots Perspectives at a Time of Pandemic
LAGOS, NIGERIA — When Coronavirus first landed in Lagos in February, few paid it much attention. Over the unending bustle of the mega-city of 23-million, it can be difficult to be heard. Meanwhile, across the world, the virus was shutting down city after city, country after country, and the global death toll was on the exponential rise.
In the third week of March, Nigeria saw a sudden spike in cases — from 2 to 22 — and the country acted swiftly. On a Thursday, the caseload jumped from 2 to 8. On Saturday, the government announced the imminent closure of all airports. On Wednesday, the Lagos State governor announced the closure of all but “essential” businesses. By the following Monday, Lagos was on lockdown, and the city — known across Africa for its hustle — had ground to an eerie halt.
There has long been a disconnect between the lived experiences of Nigeria’s urban poor and the narratives portrayed in popular media outlets. Despite constituting a majority of the country’s major urban centers, journalism and mainstream media landscapes in the country are largely shaped by perspectives that are unconnected, if empathetic, to urban poor realities.
Recognizing the need to bring an urban poor perspective into the public discourse, the Media4Change Team of the Nigerian Slum/Informal Settlement Federation, supported by Justice & Empowerment Initiatives (JEI), emerged in 2017 with the goal of democratizing Nigeria’s communication and information ecosystem. The team was born out of a collective struggle for housing and dignity in the wake of the massive violent government-led forced eviction of Otodo Gbame — an ancestral fishing community of over 30,000 in Lagos — and has since consolidated into a dedicated team of storytellers from slums working across a variety of mediums to share the stories of their communities in their own words.
As Lagos went into lockdown, it became clear that media surrounding the virus would be no exception to the familiar paradigm of popular discourse being detached from urban poor realities. Reports began to surface of government food relief programs targeting the urban poor, but reporters — like the food relief — rarely reached the communities themselves. So, in late March, the Media4Change Team sprung into action — launching Corona Diaries of the Urban Poor — a series of stories told from the intersection of poverty and pandemic that brings the voices and perspectives of the country’s urban poor to the national conversation on coronavirus.
As coronavirus began to spread across Nigeria, and the government’s containment measures kept the country’s urban poor at home, the Corona Diaries series began to tell a story of a disease brought in by the rich that quickly became the burden of the poor. Unable to go leave their homes, many were unable to work. Unable to work, many were unable to eat. Unable to eat, unrest and insecurity began to rise. Unable to provide “palliatives,” and recognizing the rising security threat, the government lifted lockdowns.
In the process, coronavirus found its way into crowded urban poor communities amidst an environment of skepticism and a lackluster government healthcare response. As these interconnected elements of Nigeria’s coronavirus saga emerged, the Media4Change team was there to capture them in stories and share them with the world.
The Corona Diaries series merges environmental portraiture with radio journalism, creating visual storytelling products carrying the power of unmediated voices of the urban poor. In doing so, it pioneers an innovative storytelling model that allows storytellers to contribute using just their phones, and audiences to access low file-size stories in a lockdown-context where megabytes are both a lifeline to the outside world and precious commodity. Stories weave together interviews with community members and reporter-style reflections, and are published across social media platforms and existing online networks of urban poor.
Since its launch, the Corona Diaries of the Urban Poor series has published over fifty stories from over thirty communities across four different cities in Nigeria, garnering tens of thousands of views, and bringing grassroots perspectives to the media landscape at a time when they are needed most. Stories have spanned a diverse range of topics as the impacts of coronavirus and its containment measures have evolved since February, and the series has caught the attention of major news publications — providing established journalists with story leads from urban poor communities, leading to the re-packaging of Corona Diaries stories into full-length articles, like this one from Reuters.
Nigeria’s pandemic story is far from written. By developing a rapid-response media production model that leverages, rather than being hindered by, the distance between the team’s members, and publishes an accessible media product for a wide audience, the Media4Change Team is positioned to be relevant contributors to the national discourse on coronavirus in the uncertain months to come.
As Nigeria’s cumulative coronavirus caseload climbs to more than 20,000 infected, with a curve that shows no signs of flattening, cities across the country have begun to return to their crowded, bustling selves. That the country, like it’s neighbors, has yet to experience the same exponential spike in cases seen in other regions of the world has left many experts scratching their heads. But while they scratch their heads, the Media4Change Team will continue to tell their stories — democratizing public discourse around coronavirus in Nigeria, and ensuring that the voices of their communities are heard.
