Traffic jammed streets. A roadside robbery carried out by children who don’t look older than 10. A gang ring. Many gang rings, embedded in every level from an underground crime scene to the coffers of government authority. A murder. Multiple murders; gory, imperceptible, gruesome. A broken neighborhood, uneasily nestled inside an even more broken city, Lagos. Gangs of Lagos, Amazon Prime’s spring 2023 thriller success and the first African original production from the streamer, wastes no time in establishing itself as an authority on the absolute mindfu*ck that is living in one of Lagos’ most notorious underbellies.
The film came out in April, but its themes and characters have stuck with me months later. The story follows three friends — Obalola (Tobi Bakre), Gift (Adesua Etomi), and Panama (Chike) — trying to survive the harsh realities of living an impoverished life surrounded and defined by crime. It’s seen and told through Obalola’s eyes, as he embraces his father’s unscrupulous legacy by diving headfirst into a life of crime, first by conducting small robberies with his friends before getting a hang of the rules and hierarchy of the streets and growing into an accomplished crime lord in his own right. Gangs of Lagos, directed by renowned Nigerian filmmaker Jade Osiberu, is a gripping story that explores the state of conditioned, unchangeable realities made possible by poor governance and administrative neglect. These conditioned realities make it hard for children in disadvantaged neighborhoods to change or imagine the possible change in the trajectory of their lives.
Etomi and Bakre are not merely two of this film’s lead characters, they are also the most unforgettable. Bakre, a reality TV star who is just rising up to take on major roles, began his career in the Nigerian film industry by playing supporting characters. He has been in notable films like Sugar Rush and Kunle Afolayan’s Mokalik, but he entered his role in Gangs of Lagos with a precision that belies his limited years of experience. His previous role as a ruthless mastermind of a deadly criminal ring in 2022’s Brotherhood (also directed by Osiberu) also provided him with an entry point into his character, Obalola.
“I was glad to tell the story of some of the people we see in Isale Eko,” Bakre tells Teen Vogue on a warm Thursday evening in Lagos via Zoom. He, alongside co-star Etomi and others, are in the middle of press rounds for Gangs of Lagos and from the breathless excitement in his voice, I can imagine that it is going well.
The goal for Bakre through his character Obalola, was to “humanize these people,” he says. “We have a number of them who are victims of circumstances and would have a much better life if they [had access to] other opportunities. The world sometimes demonizes them or sees them as bad people, but you know, these are people with stories and their stories are still being written. It's not the end.”
For Etomi, Gangs of Lagos also provided her with an opportunity to provide nuance to children and people from underdeveloped parts of Lagos whose humanities are often substituted for thuggery, which is then characterized as an inherent, uncorrectable flaw. “Gangs of Lagos does something very special in that it humanizes these people that we tend to call Agberos [a Nigerian term, for touts],” Etomi says. “We have a way of separating them from us. What Gangs of Lagos manages to say is sometimes these people are products of their environments and these are the options that they have.”
Osiberu purposely shows us these characters as children before following the path their lives take towards crime and what led them there. Before Obalola was a skillful fighter aiding a drug lord, he and his friends simply wanted to go to school. But when Obalola’s guardian is brutally murdered, that dream dies a swift death, limiting his life prospects and sealing his fate as a criminal.
Etomi broke out on the Nollywood scene for her endearing lead role in the 2016 romcom The Wedding Party, one of Nollywood’s highest-grossing films in the past decade. The film landed Etomi a Vogue cover, garnered her several accolades, and ushered in a new kind of filmmaking style. One with elevated storylines, studious and less typecast actors, and more experimental filmmaking. Since then, Etomi has found herself drawn to playing complicated female characters. Sometimes she’s part of a group of sisters who are on the run after stealing a dead man’s money in Sugar Rush, and other times her character is the lawyer daughter of a powerful criminal lord as in King of Boys; it was that same complicated material that drew her to the character of Gift in Gangs of Lagos.
To prepare for this role, Etomi ensured to stay close to the people who are the living versions of the character she was set to play. “Isale Eko is a case study,” Etomi says. “You get to the point where you're going and filming there so often that they start to feel like family. You start to pull from these people because these are real people and if you want to make the character seem authentic, it's really important to pull on the characteristics and mannerisms of these people that live on the streets.”
Etomi and Bakre had worked together in Sugar Rush but in Gangs of Lagos, their roles were more closely intertwined. With their characters being childhood friends who grow into a life of crime together, Bakre and Etomi executed a plausible and compelling bond fueled by a shared struggle and an understanding of how punishing life in Isale Eko can be.
“On set, it was effortless,” Bakre says. “Our characters fed off each other. In moments when I was not quite there, Adesua would tell me, yeah, Tobi you're not quite there, you need to reach in deeper. So we were able to really talk and trust each other and deliver. It was helpful that we already had a good relationship away from the set.”
For Bakre, the goal is to continue to push Nigeria’s creative excellence out on the global stage. “The prayer and the goal is to jump on more projects that will push African stories, and African talents globally,” Bakre says. “We don't have a Nigerian from Nigeria in a Marvel studio that has lived in Nigeria. I know we have a couple of African brothers and Nigerian brothers representing globally, but you know, [it would be nice for] someone who comes from the Nigerian industry to be on global projects. Eventually, those are spaces I would love to be in.”
Meanwhile, Etomi hopes that Gangs of Lagos allows us to consider people from economically disenfranchised neighborhoods from a multi-dimensional standpoint.
“I hope when someone sees someone in the streets that they're a little kinder,” she says. “I hope it makes them think a little deeper about where this person has come from and about the fact that there are people who love them and there are people they love and that they're just like you and I. The only thing that separates us is the circumstances in which we grew up and were surrounded by.”
The Afrobeats Edit: What to Watch, Read, and Listen to This Week
Read: What Happens When A Man Falls From The Sky (Riverhead Books) by Lesley Nneka Arimah, is a riveting short story collection by one of Africa’s most talented writers. The stories in this collection travel from magical realism to speculative fiction, urban myths to traditional literary fiction. They explore the ties that bind families, from sisters to mothers to siblings and fathers and have a timeless quality about them that makes them infinitely relatable. If you haven’t read anything from Nneka Arimah (which you absolutely should!), this is the best place to start.
Watch: Boy Meets Girl, is a short film inspired by the tragic events surrounding the Chibok girls' abduction in 2014. Directed by Kaelo Iyizoba, Boy Meets Girl is a harrowing study of administrative failure, of watching one’s childhood slip slowly away and of the unreliable form that hopes sometimes come in. The film’s themes of displacement, hope, love and renewal is elevated by Iyizoba’s attentive direction, allowing minute details to make the biggest statements.
Listen: This week’s Afrobeats Edit playlist is a walk through the men and women whose lives on the street immeasurably shaped their music and the African music landscape. Everyone from Seyi Vibez to Dagrin, Mohbad, Olamide, Asake, Bella Shmurda, and others.
Nelson C.J. will continue sharing must-know pop culture stories from Africa in The Afrobeats Edit, published on Teen Vogue. You can follow his work on Instagram and Twitter.
