Our story emerges from the ashes of the forced eviction of Otodo Gbame in 2017 – a Lagos waterfront community of 30,000 swept into the lagoon, its residents left homeless, its structures demolished. Over the years that have followed, the debris has been covered over with sand dredged up from the sea floor, and scaffolding for luxury estates. Another name on a long list of communities lost.
We came together to tell this story as an act of resistance. Because today, and every day since 2017, Otodo Gbame residents remain displaced, as with tens of thousands from other communities across Lagos, while hundreds of thousands more Many more remain under the threat of forced eviction in Lagos.
Our film is an outpouring – made in memory of lives lost and fractured in the eviction of otodo gbame.
A hymn. A battle cry. A hope, that a story can make a change.
A song, from a community, still waiting.
30,000 were displaced in the violent forced eviction of otodo gbame in 2016 and 2017
roots
THE LEGEND OF THE VAGABOND QUEEN OF LAGOS is not a stand-alone film. It is part of an ongoing, decades-long, multi-pronged campaign by Justice & Empowerment Initiatives – Nigeria, Slum Dwellers International, and The Nigerian Slum / Informal Settlement Federation, to end forced evictions in Nigeria, and build inclusive and resilient cities.
The community networks forged through the campaign's many years of coordinated advocacy, legal empowerment training, community savings groups, and grassroots mobilization provided the foundation upon this film was built – providing the access, wisdom, energy, personnel, and buy-in from partner communities that was integral in being able to tell bring this story to life.
an otodo gbame evictee at a protest after the eviction, photo by omoregie osakpolor
impact campaign
1. global festival circuit & targeted screenings
By screening the film to a global audience, including opinion leaders and policymakers, the film will put forced evictions, security of tenure, and housing rights of the urban poor back at the center of the global discourse on urban development and resilient cities, and enhance accountability frameworks for international actors contributing towards displacement.
2. nigerian premiere & theatrical release
By tackling local misperceptions about urban poor communities, educating the general population about the violent nature of forced evictions, and linking the film to the story of Otodo Gbame, the film will build broad-based support for national legislation prohibiting forced evictions, and for #Justice4OtodoGbame.
3. COMMUNITY SCREENINGS & grassroots mobilization
By presenting unity, community savings, and collective decision-making as the necessary foundation to resist land grab and forced evictions, and by countering perceptions of powerlessness vis-a-vis government and wealthy private actors, this film will build larger, strong, more organized, and more strategic slum dweller federations equipped to tackle the justice and development challenges facing the urban poor.
