Original subtitles

Prosperity is productivity not just hard work.

You can be very hardworking and still be broke

if you are not productive.

♪

♪

Your life condition today

is an outcome of choices and decisions made in time past.

Good choices, bad choices,

easier choices, or no choices at all.

♪

♪ I took a walk

♪ Through this beautiful world ♪

♪ Felt the cool rain on my shoulder ♪

♪

♪ Found something good in this beautiful world ♪

♪ I felt the rain getting colder ♪

♪

♪ Sha la la la la

♪ Sha la la la la la

♪ Sha la la la la

♪ Sha la la la la la la

Lagos, Nigeria's megacity.

One of the most dynamic, unrestrained,

and energetic expressions of free market capitalism

and do-it-yourself entrepreneurship

on the planet.

When you have a place of 20 million people,

they have to eat, they have to wear clothes,

they have to do all sorts of things.

I mean, Lagos is a testament to the resilience

and to the ingenuity of the Nigerian spirit.

♪

Buy, sell, trade,

hustle, and claw,

make your own way any way you can.

Nobody does any one job in this country.

I mean, they say you have to have three hustles.

Yes. You see people making watches from scraps.

There are people who make shoes.

I'm wearing something that's made by a Nigerian.

♪

I provide my own water.

I provide my own power,

because I have a generator.

I have a convertor.

There's an energy in Lagos, the hustle and the bustle.

♪

♪ Nigeria, here's you're boy... ♪

With the ridiculously overburdened infrastructure

and a history of egregiously bent leadership,

they long ago learned that ain't nobody gonna help you

in this world.

Pick up a broom, a hammer,

buy a taxi or a truck,

build a bank or a billion-dollar company

and get to work.

♪

I will push myself. I will do what I need to do.

I'll do whatever it takes to take care of myself

and my family.

♪

♪ We can't know our future

♪ Which is just why we got to live it ♪

♪ The way life goes

♪ What? It's like a... ♪

♪ Deep and sudden

Am I on Victoria Island right now?

- Yes. - So this is the promised land.

This is Manhattan.

♪

Victoria Island, the garden of dreams.

Where the winners work

and play.

There's money in Nigeria, lots of it,

mostly from oil, agriculture,

and services like banking.

Lagos alone is the fifth largest economy

in Africa.

9,000 millionaires and billionaires,

many of Africa's richest people,

live here.

♪

50 years ago there were 300,000 people in Lagos.

There are now...

- Almost 20 million. - Around 20 million.

- Yeah. - There's a whole lot of people

leaving wherever they were... Yeah.

Coming to the big city, looking to get a job,

looking to make it big. Absolutely.

The smartest, the fastest, the best,

the brightest make it over here. Yeah.

It's that place, it'll make you or it'll break you,

sink or swim.

Shina Peller owns Quilox,

one of Africa's most exclusive nightclubs.

I built the nightclub by myself,

my construction company.

Banky Wellington is an artist and businessman.

I'm a record label owner. I'm an actor.

I'm a director. I do videos and TV commercials.

I'm in advertising. I'm in real estate.

I'm training to be a chef.

Why work so hard? I mean, you don't have to hustle.

Your life is good. Business is good.

Why are you doing so many things?

That is just something that is common in Nigeria, you know.

There's the eternal Nigerian optimism

that tomorrow is going to be better than today.

Yeah, where does that come from?

Why are Nigerians so... So optimistic?

I think that it's born out of necessity.

You know, you're either going to make it

or you're gonna be screwed.

You almost don't have a choice.

You need to try everything possible.

I must make it. I must be successful.

♪

♪

Right over there, Victoria Island.

That's the Nigerian dream, right?

If I just hustle enough, if I figure out a way,

I have a master plan, God's help,

I'm gonna end up over there.

It's close. It's really close.

How do you get from here to there?

It's impossible.

The government and the people in power

make poor people perpetually poor.

♪

This is the other Lagos, Makoko,

a city within a city.

This community has been in existence for over 100 years.

This used to be a little fishing village.

- Yeah. - People started showing up,

no plan, build your own house.

The community had been built,

not based on government plan.

It is an ingenuity of the people.

How many people live here?

- The whole waterways... - The whole waterway.

The whole waterways would be about 100,000 people.

Mm-hmm.

♪

♪

It's a fully functioning community.

I've seen barbershops...

restaurants, groceries, hotels.

Hospitals, private schools.

Self-made, self-run, self-policing,

independent of everything.

It exists because it has to.

I mean, there's electricity, there's water.

All of this, you provide, yes?

Yes. Yeah, we provide.

Udato Abganigi is a musician and activist.

This community started from nothing.

Now it's booming,

and the government is coming to seize it.

They... they want to get you out, right?

- Yes. - They like to build hotels.

Yes.

Yami Maisu, the son of a neighborhood leader.

But they've been forced to stop.

No, it's not... They're not stopping.

- They're never stopping. - We've been...

We've been able to halt them.

Two, three weeks ago there was another community

on the other side of Lagos... On the island.

On the island, was also demolished.

They just come and demolish.

The people living here, their source of livelihood...

The bans on fishing, they are fisher people.

So if you take them to the mainland,

it's like taking a fish out of water.

Out of water, cant survive.

They can't survive. Can't survive.

- What have we got here? - It is called moyu.

- Moyu. - We eat this with

You eat this with... Mmhmm.

- We call this ebà. - All right.

And here we've got garri.

That looks good.

♪

Mmm.

Good. Delicious.

♪

All the children I see... Yeah.

- Go to school? - Mm-hmm.

What will they do? Will they stay here

and take up the family business or are they gonna move on?

Well, some will grow up to become accountants,

they'll become professionals.

But what... what would... What would a lawyer do,

what would an accountant do

when there is no food?

Most of the fishes that have been sold

to the rich men in government

were actually taken from here. From this village.

- Right. - We need people

that do fishing, do family.

But you're gonna need lawyers.

- That... - You're gonna need...

You're gonna need... Everybody needs everybody.

♪

Ah.

♪

♪

♪

To do well in business, don't just be religious,

be hardworking, and be full of ideas.

You need all these to birth a real miracle.

♪

♪

♪

Where are we? Computer Village.

Yes, this is This is Computer Village.

It's your tech hub. They sell everything here.

Mobile phones, computers,

any kind of digital equipment you're looking for,

this is where to find it.

It's said to be a $2 billion-dollar market.

Public money is generated in Lagos

not so much by oil,

but by the free market,

a wild west free-for-all of private enterprise.

It grew organically, not by government intervention.

- It just happened. - It just happened.

Everything is cramped into this small ecosystem.

You have one small store,

somebody selling mobile phones right and left,

and in front of him you have another guy

whose selling applications for the phones,

a repair guy, he is right there, and it works.

That's the amazing thing about it.

Tunji Andrews is a journalist, radio host,

and an expert on the Nigerian economy.

The guys who fascinate me

are these kids sitting there with phones all opened up.

Like, if I want my iPhone repaired in New York,

I have to go to the Apple Store. I got to wait on line.

I got to say good-bye to my phone for a while.

But here, they know how to take apart my iPhone,

fix it, and put it back together.

This is how the Computer Village ecosystem works, right.

A young boy trying to make a better life for himself

finds his way to Lagos,

then one of his brothers is working here,

and then he starts to learn how to repair mobile phones, right?

Right.

And sometimes I tend to think they deal with trial and error.

- Right. - So your phone might be

just a practice... A practice-

- Yeah, but...

- They get there eventually. - They get there eventually.

And that's the success story of almost all the people

you see here.

Most of them came into this particular market with nothing.

Okay, this is Stella's Kitchen.

Oh, yeah. Well, let's get some food.

Exactly.

Pounded yam is the ubiquitous starch of Nigerian cuisine.

♪

Here it's served with egusi soup...

♪

A stew of goat meat, melon seeds,

fish stock, and chilies.

♪

This is very, very good.

So I've heard this market described as

the perfect market.

Now, what does that mean?

Right here you can find, on the same street,

about 20 people doing exactly the same thing.

So you go to the first guy and you say, "Hey",

I want you to repair my phone."

And he says, "Okay, I could do it for you at 5,000 naira."

Now, all you have to do is look across the road

and find somebody who could do exactly the same thing,

and he knows that, right?

So he starts to think to himself,

I better give him the best price I can possibly give him...

- Right. - So that I can get his market.

Completely unregulated as far as prices.

Completely unregulated.

So it's really the free market at its purest.

Exactly.

Lagos has been able to grow and expand its borders

and that comes from the sweat of people on the street.

- Right. - Once government interferes

in private activity, more often than not,

they make it more complex

and they move it towards extinction.

♪

A lot of people are outside of tax nets...

- Right. - So the state government

has to be very genius in trying to get taxes.

Right.

Flex up!

Who really runs the streets?

The de facto front line of law and order

are area boys.

The government tries to get people on the street...

like the foot soldiers.

An area boys crew levels street taxes on,

well, everything...

reporting to their regional boss, a king of boys.

Taxis, buses, any target of opportunity

pays.

You don't depend on government, fine,

but you're running your own business.

- Right. - So you pay a bribe

because that's the only way to get things done.

Every person seems to be tainted a little.

Police, politicians, business leaders,

everybody gets their piece of the action.

It's a daily fact of life in Lagos.

This is a big, oil-rich country.

Why doesn't it look like Dubai?

Well, I hate to be on this show

and talk Nigeria down, you know what it is,

because you hear all these things all the time.

So, yes, there is corruption.

It is about corruption.

It's about the fact that the resources

that are supposed to be used for people

aren't being used for people.

Kadaria Ahmed is a progressive journalist,

editor, and TV host

who moderates the presidential debates.

Years of military rule

meant that people were brutalized.

There was a fight against thinking.

There was an anti-intellectual movement...

- Absolutely. - Where you were

punished for... Shamed.

- Shamed for reading... - Yes.

For having an education, for aspiring to those things.

Yeah, you saw a decline in education

that continued for 30 years.

The biggest obstacle in this country

is the political class.

Because what we've had, you know, in Nigeria is

if you lose elections, you then jump to the other party

and you win elections,

and then if you lose, you go back to this other party.

- Right. - So it's the same people.

They're going to fight tooth and nail

to stay in office

and to keep the system the way it is.

♪

Pepper soup is the food of the night

in dark places.

It burns,

it burns real good.

Delicious.

This is a very IT savvy country.

Nigerian Internet scammers are world-renowned.

They are a tiny minority, I must tell you.

It may not be a legitimate enterprise,

but you've got some very smart, hardworking people.

They're very talented.

Imagine if they were all well-educated,

if they had access to finance.

I believe if you're a black person,

whether you're African or you're African-American,

you're never going to get any respect

unless there's a successful black nation.

♪

It is unwise to hold other people,

your employer, or even the government

accountable for your success.

That is the only way people are going to respect you.

You must do it...

Yourself.

♪

Queen Elizabeth came to Nigeria in 1959.

The 33 million people

of England's most prosperous African colony

were ready for independence.

♪

A friend of mine sends me a text, and it says,

"Are you aware of Nigerian psych rock

of the '70s?" Yes.

There was a war in the late '60s

and that caused a whole shift in the sound,

because before the war was high life.

♪

And after the war, it was rock and all sorts of sounds.

♪

This is mind-blowing, like, amazing stuff.

This was... This was a game changer.

♪

It's as if everybody took acid at the same time.

It was less the acid

and more, let's just freak out.

♪

These new sounds, mutations on funk, jazz, and rock,

marked an explosive change in Nigerian culture.

♪

How'd it do when it came out? It was wildfire.

It was a hit. Really?

It was a hit. It was a massive hit.

Kemi Castro is a collector and aficionado.

♪

This is really where it started from.

- Uh-huh. - Blo.

They had a very trippy song, which I'll play for you.

Yeah, let's hear it.

♪

This is... freaky.

♪

♪

That shift in music had to do a lot with the war.

♪

Nigeria's rebel eastern state,

the Republic of Biafra, declared its independence.

♪

That music was needed to translate the darkness.

Soldiers of the breakaway province

suffered heavy casualties and ultimate defeat.

A thousand Biafrans a day died of starvation.

The music was a defiant middle finger to war...

to corruption, and repressive military rule.

You know how military dictators

try and control everything.

But of all the music of the time,

nothing and nobody took it directly to the people

in such explicitly confrontational terms

as Afrobeat and its architect, Fela Kuti.

The government were giving Fela a hard time

because he was protesting by name...

- Yeah. - Specific things.

I mean, they identified him as a existential threat,

and he was.

People would show up at the Shrine.

- Exactly. - Like, what's he gonna say?

What's he mad about today?

Fela was an African superstar,

a loud, persistent, and unwavering voice of opposition

and resistance.

♪ Zombie no go, go unless you tell him to go ♪

♪ Zombie

♪ Zombie no go stop unless you tell him to stop ♪

People protested but they didn't name names.

- Right. - But Fela would name names

and... and say, you know, you're a... thief.

♪

♪

♪

♪ Uh-huh

♪ Quick march slow march ♪

♪ Left turn right turn

♪ About turn double up

♪ Salute open your hat

♪ Stand at ease fall in

♪ Fall out fall down get ready ♪

For one decade, Fela's voice was the only voice here

opposing the dictators.

And he paid a very high price.

His house was burned. He was stopped from playing.

Fela died in 1997 of AIDS

after a social life that could be best described

as complicated.

He married 27 wives in one day, for instance,

but he left behind an enormous legacy and a family,

including two internationally celebrated musicians

in their own right,

Femi and Seun Kuti.

♪

Because of Fela,

we are able to voice our opinions today.

If things are not right, you can't just gloss over it.

There is no reason why this country

cannot be ten times better.

Daughter Yeni runs this place,

the New Afrika Shrine...

We have more money, we have more oil,

but we have bad leaders.

Both a musical venue and political pulpit

with a vital position at the epicenter of Nigerian music.

♪

♪

So you drink beer.

If Anthony is drinking beer,

I'm drinking beer, too. How can you say

because he's drinking beer, you're drinking beer?

- I'm a fan. - Of him drinking beer?

No, of him. No, I'm a fan of beer, too,

but you know, he's drinking beer, I'm drinking beer.

You grew up at your dad's compound,

and I know at one point,

he wanted you to become an area boy.

He thought that that would be good street cred.

That's to put it kind of mild.

He just wanted me to be...

like, from the streets.

We've been running into area boys constantly

through this week, and I kinda want to know

how the structure works, like...

If you wanted to go for elections, for instance,

you needed... you'll need to see all the area boys.

You'll have to give a lot of money

for him to get all his gang members to vote for you.

And if you do a good job in dealing with this,

you probably would win.

That's not quite democracy, though, is it?

No, it's not.

Nigeria is not really, you know, a democratic state.

♪

♪ Struggle music

♪ Struggle sounds

♪ Struggle people

♪ Struggling now

♪ Struggle music struggle sounds ♪

♪ Struggle people struggle now

♪ Struggle music struggle sounds ♪

♪

What is going on in Africa today for me,

I think, is a perverse kind of hopelessness,

working for a system that is oppressing you,

and you know they're oppressing you but you've given up that

there's nothing I can do about it.

I mean, is that what you see?

Because honestly... Yeah.

I've never been in a country where everybody was

working so hard at something.

- They're hustling. - They're hustling.

Look, I've been to the DRC,

to Goma and Kisangani, and those were not hopeful places.

Yeah, but... but Nigeria is the same way as DRC

and the North are because we have the Boko Haram insurgency.

People are being killed, but nobody wants to talk about it.

Nobody wants to act as if it's as serious as...

Because Nigeria, we play... We play the game.

We are the kings of the game.

We were so proud

when Nigeria arrived in Kenya for the Africa Summit

because we brought the most amount of private jets.

You understand? This is their mentality.

They are all elitists, you know.

They have yards, you know, in the country

where 90% live on... Live in poverty.

It's self-esteem.

- Self-esteem? - Yes.

- There's something to that. - No, I don't think

that self-esteem is about what you can buy.

Excuse me, that's not what I said.

As much as Nigeria is bad,

there is...

hope.

♪ On the weapon of the future ♪

When I grew up, we were like...

We couldn't sit here like this.

The police would come here and beat everybody up.

A generation will come where they will say enough is enough.

Let's take back our lives.

Femi Kuti for President.

Don't listen to him.

FKFP, Niger resistance.

♪ Drop the sound on the weapon of the future ♪

♪

♪ Drop the sound on the weapon of the future ♪

♪

It is the melody of the angels of death.

Do not be afraid.

♪

♪

The Hausa are the largest tribal group in Nigeria.

Known originally as cattlemen,

they have become powerful politically as well.

♪

This is Dambe boxing,

a very old and very brutal fighting art

deeply ingrained in Hausa traditions,

particularly among the butcher class.

It is a way for tough young men to earn a few bucks...

♪

We are African men!

Prove themselves, and break up the grim routine

of their daily lives.

♪

All Hausa versus Hausa.

Yeah, Hausa versus Hausa.

♪

You hit with one hand.

Yeah, and the other one is to block.

♪

Ooh!

Oh!

♪

Thank you.

Interreligious and intertribal violence

has been a fact of life for years in Nigeria.

There are over 300 tribes

and tens of thousands have died during such conflicts.

In Lagos, some are trying to rewrite that narrative.

The neighborhood of Agege is a melting pot

of different tribes and religious groups.

This was originally a Yoruba area, yes?

Yes, yes.

But the Hausa people have been living here

for a very, very long time cooperating...

Yes, for a long time. 54 years ago.

The intermarriages in between us and them,

so that is what we... there are a lot of understanding.

♪

Masa, rice cakes made from Nigerian sticky rice,

sugar, and potash,

a mineral-rich salt.

This is fura.

It's made from millet and milk.

It's more like a yogurt, slightly sour.

- Yes. - Oh, that's great.

This is one of the surprising foods

that's also made of beans.

- This is all beans? - Yes.

Danwake, high-protein bean-flour dumplings

served with tomatoes, onions, and a peppery sauce.

Mm, delicious.

Moringa.

And Moringa salad,

made from the leaves of the zogale tree

and said to have medicinal properties.

Kuli kuli powder is a garnish or condiment

made from ground peanuts.

What do you see the future of this area

and your people?

Anything relies on education.

We promote both western and Arabic knowledge.

The whole Africa, even the whole world,

is represented in Lagos,

so we have to work together.

The prophet of Islam, Muhammad...

Sallallahu Alayhi Wa Sallam.

He lived with crystals and jewels peacefully

without any problem.

We believe if there is no peace,

there will be no progress.

You cannot go to mosque, you cannot go to church,

you cannot got to school, you cannot go to wake.

We love Lagos. We love peace.

And we pray to almighty Allah to continue living in peace.

God bless Lagos.

God bless Nigeria.

♪

♪

♪

Good cooking takes time.

♪

As more and more Lagosian men and women

enter the workforce,

fewer and fewer cook the old way,

long low and slow preparations that can take hours.

♪

The Lagos upbeat style

makes it impossible for you to cook everything at home,

so you go, you buy it from the streets.

♪

So who blogs about food here?

- We all do. - We all blog about it.

- All of you. - Yeah.

Ateem, her mom, Iku, and friend, Oz,

are all hard workers,

holding down multiple jobs between them,

but they hang on to their fierce love of food

and cooking.

Who are your readers?

- Primarily Nigerians. - Homesick Nigerians also,

- I would think, in the states. - Yes.

Particularly homesick.

But then people that are married to Nigerians

that want to learn the cuisine. Ahh.

These days, one often eats quickly

at a place like this,

Yakoyo, serving traditional Nigerian dishes

made the way they should be made.

This is called ewedu. It's jute leaf.

Ewedu is a soup from the Yoruba tribe,

crayfish, chilies,

locust beans, and jute leaves.

Mm. This is good.

Have you had jollof rice?

It's rice cooked with...

- Tomato sauce. - Spiced tomato sauce.

- Yeah. - It's almost like

Spanish red rice.

♪

Jollof rice, a staple across West Africa.

Country of origin?

Don't get into that issue. It's contentious.

All I can tell you is it's delicious.

Who runs these businesses?

You walk in and you see and old lady sitting by the corner?

- Yeah. - Her eyes are darting.

- Yeah. - You know, she's checking.

She's counting tables, you know.

Has the girl brought back my money?

- Yeah. - So she sits there

to control her money.

In the back, you see a guy

cooking big batches to refill. Yeah.

♪

Goat meat, okay.

This is pounded yam. Of course.

This I've seen.

And this is amala.

Pound it and cook it kind of like this.

No.

This is yam raw, sliced,

ground into a flour... Yes.

- And then cooked into a meal. - Yeah.

- Kind of like grits. - Yes, yes.

♪

It's about what you want, how you want to combine it.

Thank you.

You don't... you don't tilt your glass when you're pouring there?

I do, I'm just lazy.

Man, you guys are harsh.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no!

I'm gonna be reading about myself on your blog.

He's an animal at the table.

The food here is really, really good.

We're seeing quite a bit of evolution going on.

Mm-hmm.

We're not all sit-at-home moms anymore.

Not many people want to pound yam.

She certainly does not want to pound yam.

- Nope. - And I'm sure

when she's getting married,

one of her gifts to her husband's house

will not be a mortar and a pestle.

- Unlike 20 or 30 years ago. - It will be

a food processor, most likely. Right.

And personally, I think, maybe people...

Women, my generation, might have failed people like her

by not passing things on.

But now, thanks to food bloggers,

the younger ladies have...

- An avenue to learn. - An avenue to, you know,

get this information without depending on their mom.

How much interest in food is there these days?

More? More.

- Nigerians are big on meat. - Yeah.

- Yes. - So when you see

that we have a few vegan chefs, people...

- Wow, vegans. - Yes.

In... in Nigeria. Yeah.

I think that shows you

just how much where people are finding their niche here.

- Yeah. - But you know,

that's for a certain social class.

The bulk of the people still...

I mean, they don't have access to the Internet.

- I don't think they care. - They don't care.

- Yeah, that's the difference. - You know, the guy

just wants to fill his tummy for the day, you know.

So, yeah, food is changing,

but it is not a... Not a revolution yet.

♪

♪

And these kids with no education...

now they're fixing iPhones.

♪

I mean, imagine if they were all well-educated.

♪ Of Africa

♪

They say that where there's a will,

there's a way.

And there is plenty of will in Nigeria.

♪

Find a niche, create a business,

build a home, a school, a community,

or look beyond to creating a new society.

♪

Andela, cofounded by Iyinoluwa Aboyeji

and run in Nigeria by Seni Sulyman,

is a rigorous training program

that teaches coders and engineers

with the goal of creating no less

than a continent-wide ecosystem

of high-value software developers.

My mom had, like, a mobile shop,

something like what's in Computer Village,

like, that's where I grew up.

She'll see mobile phones, they'll fix it there,

and she just used to run that.

I tried other, like, jobs, but the jobs I got,

I'm like, no, I don't want to be a salesperson.

I don't want to be a secretary.

So that's why I got into programming.

Shalom and Blessing are trainees in the program,

people who will someday rewrite the way Africa works.

As you can see, there are a lot of issues in Nigeria today.

The average Nigerian is struggling to...

Just food, water, clothing, shelter.

We all believe that this will change,

and we all believe that we will change that.

In the U.S., for every software developer

that's looking for a job, there are five openings,

which means there's a massive opportunity

to get these awesome people, who are really smart

and really driven, to be ready to take on Africa's challenges.

But that's what's special about this place.

I mean, most people are kind of resigned

to the reality that... That they have.

We're creating an alternate reality

where there's always gonna be power for you to do your work.

- Yeah. - You know...

Africa, it should be stressed, is home to seven

of the ten fastest growing Internet populations

in the world

with a huge young and mostly untapped labor pool

of eager and ambitious people.

The impact in a very short period of time is incredible.

Before we started, people would rarely hire African developers,

and now they can.

Many of us have been products of multinational experiences.

I grew up in Nigeria, spent time in Paris,

went to the U.S., and eventually I came back home.

Well-connected, we know what's happening around the world.

And you ask yourself, if that's happening literally

just a few hours by plane away from here,

why is it not happening here?

Technology is gonna change this continent.

There is no other place in the world

where you have the opportunity

to build the future from scratch.

♪

♪ Revolution now, now

♪ Revolution now, now

Where will Lagos be in ten years?

Or 20?

Change is inevitable,

the problems enormous,

but the desire, the hope is there...

♪ Now, now

to change not just Nigeria,

but the world.

We've got all the conditions

for a revolution.

♪

Don't just build a CV, build a life.

Be better in real life than on paper.

♪ Now, now

♪ Revolution now, now

♪ Revolution now, now

♪ Revolution

♪ Oh!