CHAPTER 5: TOWARDS A NEW NORMAL
“We’re gradually adapting to constantly using a nose mask and washing of hands, with a queer addition of social distancing. It’s becoming our routine. But fears of transportation and food prices not dropping anytime soon sparks fear in the hearts of many Nigerians. With reports and new cases coming in from different countries, there’s the new saying going around that we’ll have to learn to live with the novel Corona Virus for a long time (years probably). For the urban poor, this means life will automatically become more expensive, and being poor has just gotten worse from what it use to be. Time can only tell if the new normal will become a forever normal.”
CHAPTER 4: SEARCH FOR A MIDDLE GROUND
“As part of the government proclaim strategies against the novel coronavirus, houses were identified and marked for palliatives about a month ago but the community members are yet to receive any relief materials from the government.”
“Lagos has always been a busy city before the corona pandemic. Roughly 20 million people navigating around in their daily hustles.
After about a month of lockdown, the state has seen its first gradual ease up of things for a week with careful monitoring of events. For now, Lagos has gone into a hyper state. The rush as it is is trippled than it use to be. The ease up is causing a major rush, people rushing to go somewhere, meet a loved one for support, buy stuff to stock up and sell to have something to eat. It has also appear as opportunity to some to make more money, prices of goods and transportation has shot up, uncertainty looms the air as people feel the coming week will have a shut down definitely as far as rumors go.
So far, Lagos has the highest amount of cases in the country, recording 1667 confirmed cases (As of May 8th 2020), and in total Nigeria has 3912 confirmed cases altogether. With the daily increase of cases, this pushes the rumor bar of a possible lockdown. People have to fend for themselves to eat, but people also have to be alive to fend themselves.
Do stay safe. Wash your hands regularly and wear a face mask. Together we will defeat corona.”
CHAPTER 3: “AN ADDITIONAL 14 DAYS”
CHAPTER 3: HUNGER & INSECURITY
Three weeks into a lockdown in Lagos, food remains scarce, and government relief programs remain absent from urban poor communities. Reports of groups armed with cutlasses and clubs — searching for food — continue to come in from across the city, along with threats from a group calling themselves “100 Million Boys of Nigeria”. In the last week, we’ve received several reports of communities receiving letters like the one above. Below, a vigilante group in Akute, Lagos patrols from dusk until dawn to ward off any attack (photos by Omoregie Osakpolor).
Below: Mile 1 Market in Port Harcourt, empty, as Rivers State in Nigeria moves into its second week of lockdown.
Below: In the last week — in the absence of government-provided food relief — volunteers from Nigerian Slum/Informal Settlement Federation in Lagos alongside JEI have continued to work tirelessly to distribute food supplies donated by the Indian Community of Lagos. Thus far, the team has distributed 5,100 packs of rice across 79 communities and 12 Local Government Areas. For more, listen to “They Redeemed us From Hunger”, an audio story published to this page on April 6th.
“A little assistance goes a long way. You can’t know how much people were suffering the way of which they are suffering until you really get closer to them and interact with them. There you’ll get the roots of their stories. I think our government are really making serious mistakes by neglecting marginalizing such a highly skillful and brilliant individuals living with disabilities. For the Indian Community in Nigeria, these people were saying thank you for the food support gift. One of them was even going to the extend of saying, ‘May Almighty Allah not allow disability to access your life and that of your family’”
CHAPTER 2: ADJUSTING TO LOCKDOWN
CHAPTER 1: LOCKDOWN BEGINS
Above: An unnerving quiet has fallen over Mile 12 Market in a Lagos — key point in the supply chain of food reaching informal settlements (photos by Okechukwu Samuel). Below: listen to two audio reports sharing the perspective of traders and informal settlement residents on Day 2 of Lagos’s lockdown.
“From the crazy rush of people trying to buy stuff and get home quickly before the lockdown to the lockdown proper this morning. This is not a motion video, but two photos, night and day, made two audios too of the different feeling. From crazy, shaky rush and loud honking, to still shot, calm and no movement. Interesting transition of Night and Day of our 14days lockdown in Lagos.”
(Cotonou, Benin) “In order to fight against the spread of the coronavirus in our slum communities, the media team of Benin Federation went around those communities to mobilise and sensitise the federation members this morning around 6 am. This awareness takes into account the good ways of washing hands, the new ways about greeting people, the new ways about coughing or sneezing, the mastering of social distance, and the techniques and many other point relative to the different measures of prevention.”
(Lagos, NG) Members of communities of the physically challenged share makeshift face masks in Lagos Island and Agege as their members prepare for the virus’s spread in the megacity of Lagos.