In November 2016, people living in Otodo-Gbame, a fishing shantytown on Nigeria’s Lagos coastline, saw their community partially destroyed by fire. Attempts to get the police to stop the destruction were futile, according to an Amnesty International report. Instead of helping, “the police and a demolition team returned overnight with a bulldozer”.
Much of the blame fell on the Lagos state government, which had publicised plans to remove waterside slums around the city. Still, the government denied responsibility for demolishing the shantytown, even as it noted that it would “prefer to have better development, befitting of a prime area in a mega city” on the land occupied by the community.
The destruction led to protests and violence, but halfway through 2017, despite a court order demanding that the government compensate those affected and halt evictions, Otodo-Gbame had been mostly reduced to rubble.
Seven years later, the demolition of Otodo-Gbame forms the real-life backdrop to the fictional story told in The Legend of the Vagabond Queen of Lagos, a film made by the Agbajowo Collective – a group of five Nigerians (two of whom were born and raised in Otodo-Gbame) and two foreigners.
“We thought that a film would explain the situation better [than documentaries made about the settlement’s destruction],” says Tina Edukpo, who grew up in Otodo-Gbame.
Mathew Cerf, a film professional based in the US and a member of the collective, says the group had “an audacious goal” to make a movie about the episode that “could stand up on the international stage”.
That goal has now been achieved, with The Legend of the Vagabond Queen of Lagos receiving its world premiere at the Toronto film festival (TIFF) this weekend.
The film follows Jawu, a struggling mother, before and after she discovers a bag of cash deposited by a corrupt politician in Agbojedo, the film’s stand-in for Otodo-Gbame. She takes the bag home and it transforms her life.
But taking the money also complicates the life of the politician, who is planning to use it to procure the services of a crew of violent thugs, a pivotal part of the story that was also based on an actual event.
In the mind of the South African film-maker James Tayler, the real-life discovery of 449.6m naira (about £215,000) coalesced with the Otodo-Gbame evictions and led to a funding proposal he submitted to the Sundance Institute.
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The proposal was successful. At around the same time, Tayler was teaching a film-making workshop in Lagos supported by a trio of community organisations: Justice & Empowerment Initiatives (JEI), Slum Dwellers Initiative, and the Nigerian Slum/Informal Settlement Federation.
The workshop was targeted at young people from waterfront communities in Lagos and Port Harcourt, a city in Rivers state, and among those attending were the Nigerian members of the collective. Cerf was later asked by the JEI to join the team in Lagos.
Growing up in Otodo-Gbame, one member of the collective, Atinkpo Elijah, was there throughout the waves of demolition and for a time was separated from his parents. He was a student interested in photography during the upheaval, and has since become a film-maker. Life was tough back then, he says, and he had to rely on the kindness of others for somewhere to live.
The journey from the ruins of Otodo-Gbame to Toronto has taken years. Elijah says making the film was important because it is a way to “enable people to connect better with our story”. He hopes it will get a screening at other festivals too.
At least five members of the collective will be there for the premiere at TIFF, which they hope will lead to a series of Nigerian screenings, including the Africa international film festival in Lagos in November. There are also plans to show The Legend of the Vagabond Queen of Lagos in various communities across Nigeria in “guerrilla-style” screenings, says Cerf.
As one of only two films from Nigeria being shown at TIFF this year, the Agbajowo Collective has received a rare honour. But what actions would members of the collective want to see from the Nigerian government, given the social impact theme of their film?
Ogungbamila Temitope says she would like the government “to put an end to forced evictions”. Okechukwu Samuel says he would like “inclusiveness” before the government makes a decision that alters the lives of whole communities. The rest of the team agree.
“I want them to repent,” Elijah adds, “and to show us they have repented by restoring people back to their communities.”