‘Don’t bring your camera’: Filmmakers face extortion in Lagos

Lagos, Nigeria – Half an hour after Nurudeen Sanni and his crew began shooting a documentary in Ajah, several men surrounded them and demanded 100,000 naira (about $75) before they could continue filming. As the crew negotiated, one of the men slapped a crew member who tried to protect the cameras. A scuffle broke out, and the men produced knives and cutlasses.

The crew fled, but one member was stabbed in the neck and seriously injured, Sanni said. “The painful part was that we saw a member of our crew being beaten and we could not do anything,” said Sanni, a 40-year-old sound recordist. His experience illustrates the risks that filmmakers, content creators, photographers and journalists say they face while working on the streets of Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city and commercial hub.

Men locally known as agberos, a term commonly used for street touts, including some who collect levies from commercial transport operators, have been accused of demanding money from people filming in public and threatening those who refuse to pay.