Inside Nigeria's Biggest Slum (beyond crazy)

So, this is the toilet here. When they go to the toilet, it just falls through to the water. The canal from land links to this place. As well? Yes, links to this place. Sewage? Yes, yes. Crazy driver. This fish is caught from the water here. Your bed is here? Yes, that's my bed. Got a nice view, eh? I used to play this when I was younger. There's people partying everywhere. Nightclubs all along the beach here. The woman living here, she's squatting. Squatting? She's squatting with someone. Illegally? She's squatting, yes. So, you don't go to the gym? No, I don't go to the gym. So, this is the local bar. That maybe if you have a few too many drinks, that you might fall into the sewage water here. We were just coming through the canals here, and we crashed into a young boy on a boat, and the boy fell into the water here. So, how to hang this here? Because of rats. It is rich in resources, it's got Africa's biggest population, and it's enjoyed democracy since 1999. But... Kidnappers are demanding money. If you pay ransoms, kidnapping continues. Over a hundred students kidnapped from a school in Nigeria's Kaduna State. Armed groups have killed more than 36,000 people in the past 10 years. The only way to end kidnapping is for society to take a stand that we will not pay. Burdened by inflation, economic stagnation. Despite being Africa's largest economy, it does have high unemployment of more than 33%. The human rights group Amnesty International says it has received credible and disturbing evidence that Nigerian security forces shot and killed at least 12 people, taking part in peaceful protests last night in the country's largest city, Lagos. A city in chaos. Across Lagos, buildings have been torched. Mass kidnappings, attacks by armed groups and criminal gangs, corruption, and a lack of jobs. So, where does Nigeria go from here? Nigeria. Many people would think of scammers, kidnapping, and violence when they hear the name Nigeria. But how frequent are such events? Shall we go, put our feet in the dirt, and see what it's like for ourselves? I think so. Africa's most populous country. No one for kidnapping, for ransom. What's the price? The price of this one is 1,000. A city in chaos. Don't have words. Welcome back to Lagos, Nigeria. Biggest city in Africa, and one of the biggest English-speaking cities in the world. Today, we're going to a slum. One of the biggest, if not the biggest slum in Nigeria. A third of it is actually floating next to this huge bridge that crosses the mainland of Lagos onto the islands here. So, we're going to cross that bridge, and then we're going to go down into the slum. Going to meet the people, go out on a boat through the canals of this, what they call the Venice of Nigeria, and we're going to explore. It's going to be absolutely incredible. Let's get on the road and see what we can discover in this hive of life. So, we just met some guys on the side of the road, and it's a black market exchange rate. You get more for your money, and there's just some guys sitting on the side of the road. Gave them $200, and we got back... How much did we get back? $104,000. Massive wads of cash. Okay, so we've arrived in Makako, and it's absolutely incredible. You can see the boats behind me. We're about to go for a ride. This is Sunday, right? Yes. And you're going to show us around. You live here? Yes, I live in Ethiopia. Wow. We were just coming through the canals here, and we crashed into a young boy on a boat. You can see it's very tight. And the boy fell into the water here. You said that happens quite a lot? Not all the time, but it happens like sometimes. He must have a strong immune system because the water is quite dirty, right? Yes, the water is dirty. But the thing is, we are used to it. And falling into the water doesn't affect him. Nothing would happen. No? All he needs to do is just to go back home. Wash. Wash himself and then start moving. Uh-huh. That's it. If I fell in the water here, maybe I get sick because I'm not strong. Maybe because you're not used to this community. Right. And how does the toilet system work here? The toilet system, everything goes to the water. So, this is the toilet here. You can see it's a shack. And so what, when they go to the toilet, it just falls through to the water? Okay. So, the kids swimming in here are swimming in toilet water? The kids swimming here, they are stubborn boys and girls. They don't want to listen. Stubborn. We stop them from swimming in this water, but they still don't want to hear. Okay. Yes, we stop them because the water is polluted. Big time. The water is polluted. Because, you know, all this garbage from the land, the canals from land, links to this place. As well? Yes, links to this place. Sewage? Yes, yes. And when rain falls, all the water from land and everything switch to this place. A lot of sewage that comes from a city of 20 million people ends up here. Yes, coming here. So, very, very polluted. Yes, the water is polluted. And the children don't get disease or...? They don't. We don't know how God is doing it. But, even I myself, if I fall into the water, also in this water, nothing would happen to me. You can look at my body, I'm still okay. Is that why you're so muscular? Because this must be the water, right? Maybe, I don't know. Because you say you don't go to the gym, right? I don't, I don't. I've never go to the gym in my life. He's got good genetics. Yes, I never go to the gym in my life. So, I'm still okay. Nice one, man. Yeah, it's impressive. So, you don't go to the gym? No, I don't go to the gym. I've never been to the gym. Just naturally like that? Yes, naturally. It must be the water then, right? No, maybe. Can I try? Don't try, don't try. And electricity? Few people can generate electricity from the land. From there, you run the cable down to this place. Right. But few people can afford it. And how deep is the water here? The water, some places are four feet, some places are five feet. Huh? Four, five feet. Do people own the buildings here or how does it work? Yes, people own the buildings. And they rent them out or? Not rent. The families own them? Yes. So, Sunday was just telling me that recycling bottles here, you can see some big bags of bottles. The locals pull them from the water and then they sell them to companies. So, really cool to see them cleaning out the plastic from the sea here. Bye-bye. Hello. Bye. Bottles? Yes. How much do you think they get for one big bag? Four thousand, yes. Yeah, like four thousand. So, we've come out to the edge of Makako here. This goes so far into the distance, right? Yes, yes, yes. Huge. How many people do you think live here? We have over 200,000 people. 200,000? Yes. Wow. And that's the third mainland bridge, that's the bridge that we drove over before, right? Yes, the third mainland bridge. You're a good swimmer. All of them, all these guys you see, they are my brothers. Hey man. Yes. How are you? Good? Sunday, this is like a children's center. Yes, sir, yes. The building was divided into two. I stay in one room and the other room is also used for class. You live here? Yes, I live here. Uh-huh. Yes. And so, we're standing on dirt right now, right? Yes. So, this was filled in... This is where the kids played. Uh-huh. They played, you can see up on it, they play football here in this place. It's like a land in the whole community. So, all of them comes here. So, most children come here to play. Uh-huh. And so, how did you build this? Yeah, we have to use... Some wood, we have to buy some wood to cover it up. Firstly, we have to start putting the sodas. And after sodas, we have to pay the sand diggers to go and bring sand. So, we put sand on it and it becomes land. So, this fish is caught from the water here? Not from water here. They actually buy this from land. The one that comes from water here doesn't stay. Okay. They take them to the market and sell them at once. So, the water that comes from the water here is more valuable? Yes, more valuable. How much would this fish cost? Like for one, what's the price? It's like 150. 150? 150 Naira. Uh-huh. 150 Naira. Before we continue, I just want to give a quick thank you to Canva for sponsoring this video. If you don't know what Canva is, Canva is basically your all-in-one creative platform for anything to do with editing, whether it be photos, social media posts, and you can actually even edit video on there. I've used Canva in the past before they actually approached me to sponsor the video. So, I thought it would be a good fit because it's actually something that I've used before. What I think I appreciate the most about Canva is the layout is very user-friendly and simple compared to the traditional, much more complicated programs. You don't have to have had experience using any kind of editing software for photos or video. You can just jump right in. When you're editing videos, there's even an audio library there for you to use. There's title animations and everything. So, it's combining many different programs into one easy-to-use software. You have access to unlimited folders and up to 100 gigabytes of storage. My favorite Canva Pro feature I would say is the video editor. It takes out a lot of the technicality of video editing. I dropped a few files into the video editor to try it out and it was super simple and quite fun. So, Canva Pro costs just $12.95 a month and that can be spread amongst five people. So, if you have five people and you can share the account, it comes out at a really reasonable price. Using the link in the description of this video, you get a 45-day extended trial. So, it's risk-free. So, a huge thank you to Canva for sponsoring this video. Let's get back to it. So, this is your house, right? Yes, this room here. In here, uh-huh. This is my... I do play football sometimes too. Really? This is my football boots and... Where do you play football? There's a land. Okay. A land, a beautiful land. We can play over there. This is my room. You know, this is VHT. And, you know, there's a light. People, my friends, my relatives, neighbors, they normally come to my room to watch television. Okay. Yes, you know. So, this is your room or... This is my room. All of this? VHT, yes. Your own room? Yeah. Nobody else? Nobody else. Your personal room? Yes. Okay. And so, you let everybody come and watch your television? Many people don't have television for me to have... Electricity. For me to have the advantage to have this. So, I have to let them in... Share it. Watch whatever they want to watch. Beautiful. Yes. And your bed is here? Yes, that's my bed. Got a nice view, huh? This is my bed. Okay. And this is a bed. So, how to hang this here? Because of rats. A lot of rats around and... You know. Wow. Yes. And you're watching... What country is this from? I think it's China. And you like watching Chinese dramas? Yes, sometimes. But you don't understand it, do you? I understand English. Is this in English? Yes. Okay. The actor is speaking English. Oh, it's dubbed. Yes. Okay. I have some television with some games. Video games. A couple of friends normally comes, play game with me and other... Only in weekends? Yes, only weekends. What games are you playing? PS2. Yes, you play PS2? Yes, I played, yes. I'm on a lift. Yes. Where do you buy these games from? Download it. Oh, you downloaded it. Oh, wow. I'm losing. I used to play this when I was younger, this game. Oh, okay. I'm terrible at it, though, right? I give up. Who wants to play? There you go. Thank you. Okay. Where did you get three PlayStation 2s from? I bought two. Sorry? I bought two and someone gave me one. Okay. Yes, I bought two. There's a market on land where they sell them. So, used one from like UK, from America, so they bring them to Nigeria. How much does it cost? I can't afford the new ones, but I bought the used one for 20,000. You were saying that crime here is very low? Yes. And can you explain to me what happens when you catch a criminal? We get a very big boot. The person that commits a crime, we're going to put him in front of the boot. And if we put him in front of the boot, we expose him around the whole community. Okay. The chief is going to be in the boot. The elders, the youths, women, exposing the person to the whole community. Okay. That he has committed such a crime. Right. And after which you'll be sent away from the community. You send them away? We send them away from the community. Oh, wow. And people are always scared of the punishment. Okay. So, no crime. Though there's fight sometimes. Right. But if there's a fight between two persons, what the chief has to do is to cut the boot side and make peace. Okay. Yes. And that's the real duty of the chief, to make peace in his community. Your dad? Yes. Beautiful. Crazy driver. And the woman living here, she's not the owner of this place. Not the owner? She's not the owner of this place. She's squatting. Squatting? She's squatting with someone. Illegally? She's squatting, yes. This is the room. So, you got a little kitchen here and a stove? Yes. This is the stove. This is... Oh, and they sleep in here? There's a lot of mosquitoes, so they have to make use of that. So, people go around selling things on boats? This is how they have things on boat. Okay. Yes, you know, they go around, people sell food, you know, rice and some other foods. Everything we get on land, we can get it on water here. You can buy cold drinks, biscuits, noodles, rice. The clothes, they sell clothes on water, shoes on water, phones on water. A lot of things on water. The hot tea, all you need to do is to just call the person, buy from her, give her the money, and she continue moving. And do people drink alcohol here? Yes, the men drink alcohol. Yeah, it's popular. The men drink alcohol. I forgot, there's a local bar. Okay. We should have... We can visit. Yes, there's a local bar where we fly the drone. There's a local bar around there. So, this is the local bar. Do people mainly drink beer or other drinks as well? There are some other drinks, but they mostly drink beer. They have speakers. Okay. They have speakers, they have amplifiers to play music. They play music. This is their refrigerator. Lots of electricity coming here then, with the big speakers and the fridge and everything. We have a generator. Oh, you have a generator. And this is... This is a generator for freshening water. Okay, not petrol for the... Yes, that one you see in there is for the petrol, but these ones here are for like freshening waters. So, you got to put all this in the boat and then go to where the water is, pay for the water, fresh water, and come back. So, here we are at the bar. But maybe if you have a few too many drinks, that you might fall into the sewage water here. Yeah, this is absolutely fascinating. It's very hot. But yeah, just... Hello. Young kids over there waving, they're naked. There's lots of naked kids here. So, obviously, I can't film them. Always waving and laughing and things. One of the most incredible places I've ever been in the world. So, one of the very sad things about Macaco here is there's quite a lot of orphans here. It's a bit of a problem. And there's nowhere for these orphans to live. So, they kind of jump between houses and sleep rough and things. And it's very sad. We're going to go and meet a few orphans. And there is a project to hopefully build an orphanage. It hasn't happened yet, but it's in the works. So, hopefully, we can get it going. But we're going to go and meet some people. We're going to meet the chief of this whole slum of Macaco here. We're going to talk to him. He's going to tell us a bit about the issue. Sunday is actually the chief's son. So, Sunday is the prince. Okay, Sunday. Who is this young man? This young man we have here is one of the orphans in Macaco community. He lives in your house? Yes, there's a house next door. And so, Shegun would get to live in this orphanage if it was built? Yes, if this orphanage is built, Shegun is going to live in the orphanage comfortably. His dad got sick because he didn't have the money for the treatment. I think that's what led to his death. The mother, she also fell sick and died too. So, since then, Shegun has been moving around the community. Not even going to school, not eating well in the community. Just moving around. Just by himself? Yes, by himself. And may I ask how old he is? How old are you? I am 10 years old. 10 years old. So, what will make his life better is education. He want to go to school, be a good person in life. If he had a good place he can be staying, so he will focus more on education. So, he believe with education, things will turn to good for him. Thank you very much. Thank you. Lovely boy. Okay, so we've come and met, obviously, Sunday the Prince. And would you like to introduce your dad, the chief, to everybody? Yeah, his name is Chief Shemeri Emmanuel. From what I've seen, you know, you've got a thriving community and people seem very friendly, but there is a problem with orphans here, right? Maybe your dad can explain, as he's the chief of this whole community, how an orphanage would change the community for the better and what it would bring to the children's lives. He said it's going to bring a great joy in the community. The whole community is going to be happy about it because there are a lot of these kids around, they're moving around, they're not sleeping in a good place, they're not eating well, they're not going to school. When we have this house built, and these kids are going to be happy staying there, so from there they can go to school, and from there, if they want to learn to walk, from there they can be going to the place they learn to walk and once they grow up and have something doing, so it's not going to be a problem for them anymore because they have something doing, they can walk themselves. Basically, you want to build an orphanage and in this orphanage you'll be feeding the children, educating the children, they'll be coming to school here, then they'll have a nice safe place to go back to because at the moment many of the children, the orphans don't have a place to call home and they jump between houses or even sleep outside sometimes, right? So, if you have a nice place for them, they can go and have two meals a day. Orphanage home, if it's going to be built, so we have to make good materials, good woods and it has to be a house that will last for many years. So, the wood doesn't rot in the water? Yes. Is there anything that you would like to say? Anything else? I want to send a message to a friend called Ben Stiller, an American actor. So, it has been long that I have seen him, that if this video should go across him, if you see him, so he's sending his regards to him. And all the message... Because Ben Stiller came here, right? He said Ben Stiller came here and promised to build him a school in his community, but he has not done it yet. Okay. He hasn't done it till now. Ben Stiller, you're in trouble. And the other message I want to send is that whosoever it is that want to sponsor this building of the orphanage, that they want to say to them that God is going to be with them, that God is going to strengthen them, God is going to grant them more money to help this community that will be very happy to have this orphanage home in our community. Thank you, sir. Cheers. So, as you can see, the need for an orphanage here is a big need. They're looking for 6 million, which is roughly about 14 or 15,000 US dollars. So, I'm going to leave the information in the link below. I saw that the chief was living very modestly. All the money that they make, they put it back into the community. It's a huge responsibility that they take on to make sure that the community is thriving as much as they possibly can. If you want to chip in, whatever you want, feel free to do that. We've seen what you guys have been capable in the past. I'm sure if we come together, we can really help build an orphanage in this community of 200,000 people, many kids without a comfortable bed or a community to go home to. So, no sense of identity for these children. So, this community will really help them come together. You know, they'll have food at night and things. Leave the information below and feel free. And thank you in advance if you do choose to donate. So, we've just come into this huge like beach resort kind of club. There's people partying everywhere. It's absolutely wild. There's nightclubs all along the beach here. This is obviously the more middle-class area, but I'm sure people from all over the city come here and have a day out. Entry fee was 2,000 each. What do you think about this place, Mohammed? Crazy. A lot of fun. I think everyone is enjoying themselves. So, that's one thing about Nigeria. We love to enjoy ourselves, man. So, we love life. Come on. Okay. So, we've come back to our accommodation for the night. And quite the day there. I've wanted to go to Makako for a very long time. I've been researching it for a while. It's always fascinated me with that third mainland bridge running by the huge slum there of Makako. Thinking about going was intimidating, as what happens a lot of the time. The preconceived ideas were shattered, and I felt completely safe the whole time we were looked after. People were lovely. So, again, I'm going to leave the information if you want to donate. It would be amazing if you watching and me together, we could build an orphanage for the kids. There's many other kids with stories like that, little boys and girls, that need help, they need shelter, they need somewhere to stay. Obviously, a fun place to visit for me, but living there with no guidance when you're a young kid, under 10 years old, and you're sleeping between random people's houses, it could potentially get dangerous, and there's obviously no way to grow up. So, if we could build that orphanage with you guys, and I think that would be incredible. So, I think we're aiming for around $14,000, $15,000. Please see the information below, and it would be incredible if we could do something like that for the people of Makako. To bring great change to that community of 200,000 people, for the ones that get left behind by their parents, or their parents die, then we could really give them a safe place in that community. You know, these children really deserve the help, and they deserve a second chance. In the next video, we're going on a train journey. So, that's going to be interesting, and the trains in Nigeria have an interesting story. Some of the train tracks have been blown up, but we'll talk about that and the reasons in the next video. Nigeria is an insane country, in a good way, I'm loving it. Lagos so far has been mayhem. In the next videos, we're going to go and see different parts of the country, and leave the city of 20, 25 million people. Thank you so much for watching, and in case I don't see you, good afternoon, good evening, and good night. So, you don't go to the gym? No, I don't go to the gym. I've never been to the gym. Just naturally like that? Yes, naturally. It must be the water then, right? No. Can I try?