In Apapa Lagos, the crew and I were filming an investigative documentary for a German TV platform about the conditions of some German used cars imported into Nigeria with special focus on the environmental effects of these cars especially; how the car parts are being recycled for export by foreign owned factories who don’t safely discharge their chemical waste.
We were about wrapping our shoot at this used car stand close to the Lagos sea port when some local touts, a.k.a Area boys within the area saw us. They started to group-up by calling their members on phone to join them.
The Lagos touts are very notorious. They believe that whatever you’re shooting is for profit, even if it’s news content. The moment they see a camera crew, all they see is money regardless of the crew or camera size. No thanks to the music video guys who always settle these touts by paying them good money especially if it’s a Davido or any major Nigerian artist/celebrity video shoot.
They will overwhelm the crew by approaching them in large numbers and then intimidate the crew to pay a fee if not, they will disrupt the shoot or try to grab your equipment despite having a government film permit.
Because I was working with a lightweight camera and shot handheld entirely; before they could fully group-up, we were gone!
The production project was commissioned to SPS Media
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