Preface

doi:10.7208/chicago/9780226388007.002.0008

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Preface

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https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226388007.002.0008

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xv–xxviii

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October 2016

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“Surulere is nice,” Bond Emeruwa said, and I agreed. It’s the Brooklyn of Lagos: a relatively low-density neighborhood and therefore neighborly and relaxed, and it’s full of creative people—the concentration of Nollywood filmmakers like Bond, longtime president of the Directors Guild of Nigeria, is what draws me there. It has the buoyancy of a neighborhood on the way up, with money pouring into it. Generally, it’s a fine place to have a beer in the cool evening while the conversation flows, to run into friends and acquaintances, to laugh and float in the current of news and gossip.

But Surulere is shaped by the same forces and structures or lack of structures that produce a dreary monotony across the whole city and all Nigerian cities: burglary bars, imposing metal gates, embedded glass topping cinderblock walls, concrete blackened by urban pollution and tropical mold, informal commerce and parked cars crowding the cement aprons of businesses and sidewalks (in the rare cases where sidewalks exist), motorcycles weaving through stalled traffic so that walking is taxing and hazardous. A thick tangle of electrical wires hangs overhead and cobwebs the sides of buildings—illegal connections that overload and short out the grid and keep it from economic viability. Not that anyone feels sorry for the electrical power authority. Nigeria’s electricity problems are legendary: twenty billion dollars have been invested in the sector since the end of military rule at the turn of the new millennium without visible results. Power blackouts are constant in Surulere, like everywhere else. Businesses have to create their own infrastructures for water, sewage, and security as well as power, which increases their expenses by at least a quarter—a tremendous drag on the economy and a deterrent to investment. Since Surulere is a middle-class neighborhood, many people can afford to have generators, so the roar of traffic is supplemented by the roar of thousands of generators. This background din is hard to keep off the soundtracks of Nollywood films, which is one problem they have in getting into international film festivals.

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