Voices of Urban Nigerian Youth

Formative Research

In order to understand the perceptions of Nigeria's youth, the creative team needed to transport themselves in to the "life worlds" of their audience through the use of creative research techniques. To assist in the media research phase of the project, Dr. Gretchen Barbatsis, Professor of Telecommunications at Michigan State University, came to Nigeria from October to December 1999, to join CFC's creative team as Director of Formative Research. After preliminary research and production meetings, the creative team decided on three research methods to gather information: a youth forum, focus group discussions, and youth reporters.

Focus Group Discussions: CFC worked closely with two recognized market research firms to design the formative research parameters and the questionnaire. All in all, nineteen focus group discussions were held in five geo-political regions of the country (Kano, Port Harcourt, Awka and Bauchi) which took in to account political, ethnic, regional and religious differences and sensitivities. An additional three focus groups were conducted in Lagos. Respondents were chosen from C-1, C-2 and D socio-economic groups, and focused on youths in and out of school (aged 14-22 years) young working class male and female adults (aged 23-29 years), and middle aged respondents (aged 35-45 years).

The topic guide was meant to generate information on youth's perceptions and awareness of environment and development issues, and at the same time to provide lifestyle information that would assist the drama writers with coming up with topics, themes and in creating characters, plots, and settings. The research findings were very rich and in some ways surprising as they uncovered trends in youth thinking that have so far not been documented. The research findings were later presented to the writers at a 3 day retreat.

Writers Retreat:
At the end of October, a three day writers' retreat was held at Whispering Palms, a hotel on the outskirts of Lagos, along a palm lined stretch of beach. Three seasoned Nigerian playwrights and five young writers met to map out the drama, develop characters, and agree on settings and plots. Content experts dealing with health, education, democracy and good governance, and labour made topical presentations to assist the writers in developing the content of each episode. The two research firms presented their research findings which provided useful lifestyle information that would help the writers map out the drama.

The topics identified for the 26 episodes were

• Conflict resolution
• unemployment
• education, including school drop outs, under-valuing of teachers, cultism in the universities, exam malpractice
• crime & insecurity,
• gender and human rights, including sexual abuse, incest, child abuse
• environment, including deforestation, water and waste management,
• health and sexuality, including HIV-AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases, teenage pregnancy, drug abuse
• democracy and good governance
• self actualization and acceptance including cultural values, African images and media influences

As a background to the topics identified, the under-lying themes of the drama were identified as:

• generational conflicts
• role models & leadership
• lack of information/mis-information
• self esteem, awareness, identity
• peer pressure
• psychological pressures, fear & uncertainty
• socio-economic gaps between rich & poor
• human rights
• individual vs. communal responsibility
• everyone has a stake/right
• unity in diversity
• escapism

Because one of the most important findings of the research was that youths place a lot of importance on music and spend a great deal of time listening to music, it was decided that one of the settings of the drama should be a music "shack" called "Master Vibes". Another important setting was the neighbourhood recreation centre where youths hang out, play recreational games like snooker, and generally have their own space to express themselves (there are few such centers in Nigeria).

The most time was spent on character development and the writers agreed that the drama should have at least 50% youth characters and 50% older characters.

The writers briefing was an important watershed in the project. It became clear that there was a generation gap between the older and younger writers, with the more seasoned playwrights finding it difficult to tune in to the youths "wavelength". These creative tensions led to three of the older writers leaving the project, and CFC focusing on the dynamic ideas and story lines generated by the youth while helping them to build their capacity as writers. Ready or Not became a drama not only written for youth, but became a drama written and produced by youth.