Lagos, Nigeria is Crazy (Largest City in Africa - 25 Million People)
I don't think it's safe, especially for a white person. Those were the words that the guy at the check in counter said. - I love you so much. - I'll text you later.
- Let me snap you again, Gary. - Gary? I love you so much. He's my best friend. Have a look at this market just on the train tracks.
So they know the schedule of the trains, and they move when the train comes? - Yeah. - Okay. What happens when the train comes? I said we have arranged ourselves already, when the train is coming it will not affect us. - So it goes behind you? - Yes.
Is that not scary? Government corruption is a problem. I'm basically being surrounded by guys saying dollar to me. It is rich in resources, it's got Africa's biggest population, and it's enjoyed democracy since 1999 but... —— are demanding money. If you pay ransoms, —— continues. Over 100 students were —— from a school in Nigeria's Kaduna state.
—— groups have —— more than 36000 people in the past ten years. The only way to end —— is for society to take a stand that we will not pay. Burdened by inflation, economic stagnation.
Despite being Africa's largest economy, it does have high unemployment at more than 33%. Credible and disturbing evidence that Nigerian security forces —— and —— at least 12 people taking part in peaceful protests last night in the country's largest city, Lagos. A city in chaos. Buildings have been torched.
Mass ——, attacks by —— groups and criminal ——, corruption, and a lack of jobs. So, where does Nigeria go from here? Dear children, we hope that you had a pleasant flight. For your safety, please remain seated with your seat belt fastened until the seat belt sign has been turned off. Welcome to Lagos, Nigeria, biggest city in Africa, 24, 25 million people, pretty chaotic. We're gonna go explore the city, is very interesting.
Arguably the biggest English-speaking city in the entire world. Can walk around, and you can talk to pretty much anybody in English. We're going to go right into the downtown area. We're going to meet some people, find out what makes this mad city, larger city in Africa tick.
Invigorating to be here, that's for sure. When I was checking in for the flight in Europe to fly to Nigeria, the guy at the check-in counter of the airline said to me, "Why are you going to Nigeria?" I said, "Business". I had to come on a business visa. It's very hard to get a tourist visa. As a business visa, I was able to come as a tourism consultant. Anyway, that's a whole other story, but he said, "I always like to know why people are going to Nigeria because I don't think it's safe, especially for a white person." Those were the words that the guy at the check in counter said.
So obviously, there's this perception of Nigeria being somewhat ——. So far, I feel okay but let's go and explore more of the city and see what the locals have to say about that. I've just been taken into a security office and questioned, but they let me go ultimately, didn't have to pay anything or anything like that, so let's go explore this chaotic city. It's amazing to be here, really! This is absolutely insane! That's crazy! We just come to this huge market area. We just drove through traffic for an hour or so, but this place is hectic, there's a huge market on the train tracks here.
We drove past a huge slum, you would have seen some clips there, and it's a floating slum. We're going to go there while we're here in Nigeria, but today we're in the market. What's this? - This is catfish. - Catfish?
- They're alive? - Yeah, live. - What's the price? - The price of this one is ₦1000. ₦1200. ₦1500. ₦1800. And is that because these are smaller and these are bigger? Yeah. - And these come from the bay? - Yeah.
- How many have you sold today, all together? - Like I said, like 100 pieces in a day. - How many? - One hundred pieces or 80 pieces in a day. - Eighty fish? - Yeah. Wow! Good business. - I love you so much. - She loves you so much. - My best friend. - Love you too.
- He loves you too. - Thank you. Of course, nice to meet you. - What's your name? - My name is Peju. - Peju, I'm Nick. - Nice to meet you.
- Take care, bye. - Bye. - Let me snap with you. - Okay. - Put your WhatsApp number on it. - Okay.
Add that on WhatsApp, that's my number. Wait, let me add it on WhatsApp direct because I don't want you to give me fake numbers. I would never do that! - Hi there. - Okay.
I'll text you later. - Let me snap you again, Gary. - Gary!? I love you so much. He's my best friend. Beautiful, nice to see you, bye. Have a look at this market just on the train tracks, absolutely crazy. This is central Lagos, where we come from, where we're staying is an island that's where a bit more of the money is.
This is the epicenter of a city with 24 million people, and it shows. - So, here we are with Mohammad. - Hello! Mohammad contacted me and invited me to Nigeria a few years ago. We've been working on it, and we've finally made it. Finally, you're here. You're welcome to Nigeria!
This is Nigeria! Welcome to Nigeria! And so this is like the bang in the center of Lagos, the biggest city in Africa. Yeah, actually the biggest city in Africa. Is this area safe? Yeah, it's safe actually, but you have to be very careful with your belongings. Pickpockets? Yeah, pickpockets, so you have to be very careful with your belongings. You hold it tight, but it's safe, actually. So what I've noticed, I've asked a few people and many people telling me that Lagos is safe generally, you just got to watch out for pickpocketers, but in terms of a threatening, —— kind of situation, it doesn't happen really.
No, actually nothing, Lagos is safe. That's interesting, right, because many people might perceive that the biggest city in Africa would be ——, right? Because of the population, right, but actually Lagos is safe, the people are good, and there are definitely there will be bad ones, but the perception that Nigeria is bad or Lagos because of the population is very large, over 20 million people then there will be like bad people, yeah there will be bad people, but generally, we can say that Lagos is safe, it's good. So, Mohammad, we're on the train tracks right now, right. So do trains not come here? It crosses here sometimes, but I think, I'm not very sure, but I think it crosses to be able to go to Ibadan.
Okay, so they know the schedule of the trains, and they move when the train comes? Okay, it must be a crazy time. - What is this on the left here? - Oh, this is pomo. Pomo is the skin of the cow, so it's been peeled from the cow after the cow is being slaughtered.
We can try it raw like this, but mostly it has to be made in a soup, in the soup it's delicious, very delicious, but you can even try it as well. Okay, you see this. - Is it raw? - It's raw, but it's already burnt, you know.
Okay, so it's smoked? It's smoked already, yeah, so you can feel the smoky taste, and also when you prepare it in the soup it will be more delicious, but you can eat it like this if you like it. What happens when the train comes? We transform, we have arranged ourselves, the train will not reach us. Sorry? I said we have arranged ourselves already, when the train is coming it will not affect us.
- Okay, you move? - Yes, they have already arranged themselves. When the train comes, it will not affect them, it will just pass through. - Oh, so it goes behind you? - Yes. - Is that not scary? - No. - Okay, thank you very much. - Thank you, bye. - So that was ₦100, and so that's about $0.30? - Yeah, about $0.20.
- Is that a good price? - A very good one, yeah. But there's problems with inflation in Nigeria, right? Yeah, I think before this would maybe cost like ₦50 before. Before one year ago, this would cost you like ₦50.
So everything in the last year has basically doubled for the local people. Exactly. If you're earning like ₦200.000, because of inflation what you are going to buy for ₦100 000 now you have to buy it for the whole income that you have, so you will not have anything to save.
All right, so a year ago maybe people could save money but now... You cannot save, you have to go and survive. So you see these yellow buses everywhere all over the city. There's just guys hanging out, calling people on with handfuls of money.
Now we have to cross this road. I'm basically being surrounded by guys saying dollar to me. So Mohammad, there's a system here called POS, right? And we're doing it now. Can you just roughly explain briefly how it works? Oh yeah, it's an acronym. P is for point, O is for of, and S is for sales, so point of sales.
So when you are not very close to a bank, you don't have accessibility to a bank, but you have an ATM card, or you can make an online transaction or mobile transaction so you can go to the POS center and you send the money to the POS agent, and he gives you the cash. So they will charge you some amount, maybe ₦200, depending on the amount that you would drop. - Fifty cents or so. - Yeah, like $0.50, yeah, yeah.
And so it's just these young guys here that walk around with these machines, and they give you money? Yeah, now I'm going to transfer ₦5000 to him, and he will give me the cash, but he's going to charge me. How much are you going to charge me? So he's going to charge me ₦200. But it's ₦100, it is ₦10.000 that is ₦200. So it's basically like a mobile bank that you can transfer by a mobile app, and then they give you the cash, but they have little like credit card machines as well. - What's your name? - David.
David, I'm Nick. Nice to meet you. So how's life here? Do you like it? Yes. And so you're doing the POS, and what do you do for fun? - For fun, what do you do? - Football. You want to be a professional player? - No, I want to be a doctor. - Doctor? - Yeah. - Okay, nice. - And are you going to university? - Yes.
Oh wow, congratulations! - Is it safe in Nigeria? - Yes. Okay, well, thank you very much. Have a good day, bye. We just came into a building here and walked right through the other side and just on the other side more and more markets.
It's just an absolutely packed, densely populated market here. Very nice people, though. I mean, lots of people screaming, sometimes asking for dollars, but generally, people are great, are very friendly and things, like David we just met there the POS guy and yeah it's super invigorating. - Are you buying a shirt, Mohammad? - Yeah, I'm trying to buy this shirt.
I think it's good. He's telling me ₦1000. One thousand and what, you said? He said like ₦1600, around $3, but I think it's too expensive. It would be like $1, maybe $1.50. - And it is made in Nigeria? - I believe it's made in Nigeria, yeah. - Oh, that was India, it says. - Okay, sorry, made in India, but it's made in Nigeria. - Is this made in Nigeria or India? - In India.
How much is this? So, you managed to bargain them down? Yeah, I'm going to get it ₦1300, which is like... - Okay, less than $3. - Not really $3 like $2.5. - And it comes from India? - Not really, I think they made it here. So, it's good to pretend something's from India here? They always pretend that most of our products made in Nigeria, they tend to make it like made in India or made in China just to make it superior, but it's not superior, it's made in Nigeria.
So in Nigeria, if something is made in India or China, it's considered high quality? Yeah, because it's foreign, anything that comes outside they believe that it's good, but that's not really true. So Mohammad, what is it that people are shouting out at me? Yeah, they are calling oyinbo. Oyinbo means like a white man. Any person that is white, they call him Oyinbo. We call him Oyinbo. So it's like a Pidgin English.
And is it like endearing, or is it like a derogatory kind of thing? No, it's not derogatory, actually it's endearing, it's just okay. - Right, right, it's like gringo in South America? - Yeah, something like that, yeah. And they sometimes they make like hits, they're trying to call your attention, like hey man, hey oyinbo, so like hey white man. Mohammad was just telling me that the price of, you know, meat and foods, like you were saying before, but he was saying.
Hello, very nice. Apparently, meat used to cost ₦800 a kilo, and now it's ₦2500 according to that guy, so... Hey, how are you? Good.
Yeah, people are nice, and it's so cool being able to speak directly to people as English being the language here. - So, Mohammed, this is like a ——? - It's not really a ——, it has high nicotine. - Nicotine? - Nicotine, yeah.
According to the research, the nicotine in kola nut is higher than in cigarettes. A lot of people chew this? A lot of people, especially in the Northern part of Nigeria they chew a lot of this. You have to buy it! How much? What's the price? That's why we are buying. - It's African culture. - Exactly.
- How much? - ₦50 for one. - It was nice talking to you. - You too, thank you very much. - Where are you from? - I'm from New Zealand.
- New Zealand? - Yeah, you know it? I know New Zealand, yeah. I studied history in school, so I know New Zealand. Okay, Mohammad, so we've come to this really interesting place here. We've got a central mosque here, and right across the road, we have a Methodist church.
Which shows the unity. We have a lot of Muslims and Christians living in Nigeria in unity. This is to show you there is a unity and diversity in Nigeria.
Okay, so people of different religions all get on and everything. Yeah, they all are okay with each other, staying together, living together, eating together, playing together, whatever. If you are not a Muslim in Nigeria, then you are a Christian.
There are two major religions. There may be other traditional religions, but they are not really practiced, you can't really see them. - So this is shawarma. - No tomato.
Chicken, it's shredded. - Sausage, is it pork? - No, chicken. Chicken sausage. So they make around $80 per day, which is a good one in comparison to the Nigerian situation. - Your name? - Emmanuel. Emmanuel, Nick, nice to meet you.
- He's a foreign like you. - We're the same. Okay, nice one. - You traveled here from Ghana? - Yeah. - And why? - Lagos is better. - Better life here? More opportunity? - Yes.
- No opportunity in Ghana? - Little. - So you love it here? - Yeah. Okay, and what do you do? Sorry? - Fashion designer. - Oh wow, nice work. - You look like a model. - Good looking man. - It's good, it has sausage. - The whole sausage. Enjoy, bye.
It's so crowded that everybody's had to climb over this construction site, because there's too many buses on the road. Wow, absolute mayhem. So we've met a lovely lady called Ijuma selling sim cards in...
How is life living in the biggest city in Africa? Yeah, there's Lagos. Beautiful like life. - Is it crazy here? - No, not really crazy. - It's not crazy, very sweet. - Sweet? Come to Lagos. You have fun, you have money, you have life, you club, party. Lagos is the best place you can stay in Africa.
- Okay. - You're safe. - Am I safe here? - Yeah, very safe. Nobody can touch nobody, can —— you. We are safe, no —— in Lagos, no ——, no. Can I tell you what the person told me when I was flying here? I was flying from Europe and the man giving me my ticket boarding pass he said, "Why are you going to Nigeria?" and I said "For business" and he told me, "It's very —— especially for white people." So what would you say to that? No, no, no, that's not true. We have a lot of white people working here.
We have Americans that work somewhere in the club. Some people work in the club, white people have club, have restaurants in Lagos. - You obviously love your country, right? - Yes, I love my country.
And so those are the positives and what are the negatives about living here? - What don't you like? - We don't like our governments. That's the only thing I don't like, our government. - Why? - Because they're not truthful.
They take our money, eat it, other people are not able to eat no, we work hard and give us our money, we are citizens of Africa you have to pay us our money, but they don't do that that's the only thing we don't like, our governments. Basically, you're telling me everything's great, but government corruption is the problem? Yeah, that's the problem, government corruption is the problem. But everything is okay, no ——, no, no, no. And what about other parts of the country, because maybe Lagos is safe and other parts maybe...
The only part that is not safe it's in the northern part and not all northern parts. - And what happens there? - The —— ——. - Okay, ——. - ——, yeah.
- ——. - —— in that area. - Thank you very much. - Nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you. - Cool, cool, thank you. Okay, so we've just left the market now, and we've jumped in a bolt which is like Uber, and we're heading to Banana Island, which is...
- You're eating bananas right now, right? - Oh yeah. - Plantain. - Plantain. Banana Island is like the more wealthy side. Okay, so we tried to get into Banana Island, but we got denied.
Very rich people, celebrities in Nigeria and also like the rich politicians residing there, so we got denied. So like creme de la creme, oh yeah, so we got denied, unfortunately. And they saw my camera, and they really didn't like that, they checked my footage and stuff, and then they said get out of here. But we did go to another neighborhood, and we got a small taste of some more expensive houses. You can see the clips here.
What the audience might not know is that you're not from Lagos, right? You're from Bauchi. Which is in the northeast part of Nigeria, like more than 1000 kilometers. The culture, the landscape, the environment, the people, the nature, everything is different actually.
What are the positives about Lagos do you think? If you work hard, you can get something that you can survive. Opportunity, a lot of opportunities compared to other cities in Nigeria. And what's the negative? The negative is the population, chaotic really to move in the city of Lagos, the traffic, so I think that's the negative thing.
But we just spent like an hour and a half or so. Yeah, an hour in the traffic, like at this time what will take you like 30 minutes, you spend like one hour and 30 minutes or two hours. That's the negative. Is there a power cut? A power cut? - Power cut? - Yeah, power go.
- Oh yeah, yeah. - The generators. This is the building that we're staying in, and a nice young man here, we just had a power cut, and he's just cranked up the generator. Beautiful sunset over there. In the next video, we're gonna go to, I think it's the biggest slum in Nigeria, at least one of them, called Makako and Makako is the floating slum there, and we're gonna go there, we've got local contacts, we're gonna go and see how the people live there, it looks absolutely fascinating and then we're gonna try and go to the local beach. Very, very strict security here.
I've been questioned a few times about the camera, I think three times today, and a lot of people don't like it, but a lot of people love it, so it's half and half. You can see we met some absolute characters today, really nice people. This place that we're staying in, this is kind of, I would say, a more middle-class kind of settlement. There's security here all around the perimeter, security lights, and things. I must say that I feel quite safe in Lagos so far, I haven't really felt in —— or threatened. We're going to go to other parts of the country later in the trip.
So far I haven't felt intimidated, I've felt welcomed, people are very, very kind to me, so we'll see you in the next video, and in case I don't see you, good afternoon, good evening and good night. Two hundred thousand nairas for your, for the purchases. A lot of people are like looking at me, so I hope you will cut it.
2021-11-30 01:08
