Listening in Shitta

The press and media are the watchdogs of any society, pointing out what's happening in society, be that a negative or positive ‘happening’ for that society. And in its role as watchdogs, the press, across the world, faces infringements on its freedom to do this effectively, particularly from government bodies.

In Nigeria, the mainstream media has been formidable, with the move towards what one, without wincing, refer to as democracy, the press has been formable in tackling real issues and reporting on what is really happening.  However, when it turns its gaze on the ghettos, it appears to do so with one eye covered.

Stories from the ‘hoods’ are typically stories of the ‘negative’, so much so that there is now much skepticism in the ghettos about the mainstream media. 

A danfo driver gives his view of Shitta's portrayal in the media

In one such ghetto, in Lagos, Shitta, I canvassed for views of how this ghetto and its inhabitants are portrayed in the media.  In order to put people at ease, I deliberately left my camera behind.  Nonetheless, you start asking such questions and immediately you encounter understandable hostility. “Na don come again, later na go talk say na thief thief full our area” (translation: “You press guys are here again, so that later you can report to the world that robbers and criminals come from our neighbourhood”).  Variations on this were what I encountered; stupid of me, I should have reported from my own ‘hood where I’m known.

Such is the relationship between inhabitants of our ghettos and the press that when a community within a ghetto wants to make a statement, even when it appears to have the press on its side, it is still wary, because there have been too many instances of being misrepresented, misunderstood, and of having what they’ve said reported incorrectly.

In spite of this, and in spite of the usual daily deprivations which many ghetto inhabitants grow up accepting as a fact of life, some of the ghettos and slums of Lagos still come tops when it comes to the production of music, and often when some young talent emerges into the public’s consciousness, he/she, it is discovered, is from one of our ghettos.  And this is the one area that the mainstream media cannot but come to terms with and report on.  After all, even the privileged, from the nicer parts of town, cannot help but enjoy the urban sounds generated in some of the ghettos of Lagos.

Shitta - In spite of the deprivations, here lives talent and potential

Via this bridge that music creates, the media does get to hear some of the truth about the ghettos, and not always in musical form. Rusty Joe, a reggae artist from a ghetto in Shomolu told me, “Dem television people and radio dey come our side, and we dey always tell them things about police, dem dey try small small but dem suppose dey show how dem police dey harass us and we no be bad people for here” (translation: The TV and radio folk come to us, and we tell them things about the police, about how they harass us, for instance, and also about how we’re not bad people here, and they seem to be trying to report a little of the truth, but only a little, and nothing about the harassment). It is clear that the law enforcement agencies view ghetto inhabitants as criminal minded, weed growers/smokers and a source of public nuisance, but oughtn't the media to give some credence to ghetto voices when they give their side of the story, and actually follow through with reporting both sides with even-handedness? Or is it enough for us to accept that the media may be trying to report both sides, but it ends up sacrificing one side because it fears the loss of its own freedoms? I don't think so, and neither would most in the ghetto getting the wrong end of the stick.

The funny, or sad thing, depending on how you look at it, is that most artists from the ghettos of this city goes to great lengths to cooperate with any representative of the media, but this is because it offers a route to becoming ‘known’. Yet, these same artists often find their work being used, without their consent, in jingles and in awareness campaigns.

Both sides need to come to a more easygoing understanding in which neither side loses out. If the media starts to portray the ghettos, and its inhabitants, with more fullness, and starts paying the artists their royalties, then inhabitants of the ghettos will start to lose their general wariness and mistrust of the media, and will be more willing to reveal truths about life in the ghettos that for any good media outlet will be rich material indeed.

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