For Nurudeen Olugbade taking photographs of life in Orile-Iganmu, Lagos state, during the pandemic is a way to affirm that the disruption it has wrought on the neglected town does matter.
“We are not really seen. There’s very little attention paid to us but the struggle out here is real,” says Olugbade, 28, who has documented the crisis on his phone.
In recent months the strict measures to curb the spread of Covid-19 have changed the character of the town. Ordinarily Orile, as it’s usually known, is a vibrant town but footfall has waned on the streets lined with makeshift stores built out from weathered housing units. Many of the businesses that are allowed to trade as the lockdown slowly eases are open for fewer hours, to fewer customers.
Informal work such as cleaning and making deliveries, usually serving more affluent parts of the city of Ikeja, have slowed. For the past two months a powdered milk factory in Orile that employs hundreds of people has been shut.
Photograph: Olugbade Nurudeen
An alarming rise in armed robberies, cult killings and gang warfare has unsettled those in communities that are struggling during the pandemic, roaming the area in search of work during the day, and too frightened to sleep at night.
“Everybody is on their guard,” says Olugbade. “For a couple of weeks, a situation has been going on in the area. One million boys – they’re an infamous gang that is terrorising places and looting. They haven’t come yet but people are really afraid.”
Olugbade works for a small business delivering grilled chicken from Orile, mainly to middle-class customers on Lagos Island. Business quicklydried up under lockdown. “Most customers aren’t calling for food much because they don’t want you bringing coronavirus to them. They’re afraid of being infected but we’re afraid of losing our work.”
Taking and editing pictures absorbs the hours between rare deliveries, he says. “I just walk around capturing things. I’ve been taking pictures seriously for about seven years, mostly on my phone, or when I’ve borrowed a camera.”
For Olugbade, taking pictures during a pandemic is not too difficult. He wears a mask and maintains a distance. A phone is less provocative than a camera, he says. But not everyone he wants to take photos of permits him to do so. “Most people find taking pictures intrusive and end up declining, which is understandable; not everyone wants to be documented,” he says.
Photograph: Olugbade Nurudeen
Scattered among the trampled plastic in his slum are often the clear sachets used for drinking water, commonly called “pure-water”. He used shoelaces to turn some of these into face masks. For the photo series, one evening his neighbours’ children wear the plastic masks that draw against the mouth when they breathe.
The children stand against a wall, facing his smartphone squarely and holding up lined paper with two-line statements: “No face masks”, “no sanitiser”, “no food”.
“I came up with the idea with a friend . Those are his children in the pictures,” he says, adding that his intention was to highlight the inequalities exacerbated by the lockdown measures.
“There’s a rule that says you have to wear face masks but people feel they are not readily available here,” he says. “I wanted to speak to that because the government has failed people. They aren’t making any provisions whatsoever.”
A face mask costs 100 naira ($0.26), which many people cannot afford during the lockdown. Sanitisers, gloves and soap have all become more expensive as demand has gone up.
Those residents who can afford to mostly stay in their homes, following the government measures intended to inhibit the spread of the virus. For others, however, the measures are unfeasible, and the protections too expensive, fuelling apathy towards the outbreak.
In Orile, constant exposure to dangerous environmental conditions also compounds the lack of urgency for many residents.
“There are so many chemicals around, you inhale so many things in the environment. The pollution is bad,” he says. “The borehole that we get water from is contaminated, it’s surrounded by slums. So when you get the water you just put lime in it and use it.
“I think many people find it hard to really take this virus as being more serious than what they experience every day.”
Some people see the masks less as a a precaution against the virus and more of a licence to be able to leave the area without being stopped by police. “Someone close by sells them, but people try on different masks, handling them then buy it and wear it,” he laughs. “Really, I feel it’s just a passport.”
Half of the 4,900 confirmed Covid-19 infections in Nigeria are in Lagos. The rate of new cases across the country is accelerating, doubling in the last 10 days. But his sense is that in the minds of many local people, the virus itself is less of a risk than its effects on daily life.
“People are not scared of coronavirus, the thing people are scared of is hunger.”
When lockdown measures were brought in, the Lagos state government announced that food packages would be distributed to the poorest areas. But such help has been limited and irregular, fuelling resentment.
“Last week a couple of people were going house to house to count people because the local government wanted to give provisions. Later there were rumours that they gave the food to a few people and split it among themselves. We didn’t see any of the help they promised.”
The pandemic has been draining and left many people feeling more withdrawn, Olugbade explains. “It makes it harder to connect to people but even so there are so many stories to tell here.”
