
Surviving Nigeria: Being Ultra Poor in a Country of Riches
Nigeria's oil wealth has made it Africa's largest economy, and this film opens on the golf courses, marinas, and gated compounds that wealth built. Then it crosses the street into the slums, where millions live between organized crime and daily deprivation, and further north into territory where the Islamist sect Boko Haram operates. The camera follows people on both sides of that divide: families scraping together income in informal markets and settlements, and the wealthy few who have built a parallel country of private security and walled leisure. Interviews and observational footage trace how oil revenue concentrated at the top while infrastructure, healthcare, and basic safety stayed out of reach for most of the population. The film does not resolve the contradiction so much as document it street by street, letting the contrast between marina and slum, gated community and displacement camp, make its own argument about where Nigeria's wealth actually goes. It is a portrait of a resource-rich nation where geography determines almost everything about a life.