More often than not, Nigeria has been portrayed in a negative light by the Western media.
Rather than showing the different facets of the country, attention is focused on the bad side, which is what Chimamanda talked about in The Danger of a Single Story.
These days, the different stories of Nigeria are told by Nigerians, as well as foreign individuals that have taken up interest in the culture of the country.
Snap It Oga is one of such.Snap It Oga documents the everyday lives of Lagosians on the streets of Lagos.
Devesh decided to capture and showcase his pictures online to show the world that there’s a lot more to Nigerian than the negative PR we get.
Before coming to Nigeria, Devesh research about the country, but couldn’t find anything positive online. It was a different story when he got here. In an interview for Bialere he said,
“I realized there are lot of positives which everyone conveniently ignores. There is art almost everywhere… on Danfos, on streets, on shop signboards, on school walls and so on. The people of Lagos ‘hustle’ and do it with a smile. The colors of the markets are so vibrant and the ‘never say die’ spirit of people here is just so inspiring. The Nigerian love for food, football and music is just infectious.”
Apart from the exposure that Nigeria gets from the project, Snap It Oga will preserve the Lagos street aesthetic for future generations to see what urban life in Lagos looked like.
