Artists To Journey for a Trans-Nigerian Roadtrip

On May 12, 2016, 3 writers, 3 photographers and 1 film-maker began the 5-day Lagos leg of Borders Within 2016: The Trans-Nigerian Roadtrip.


 Within the next 46 days, they will travel 15 Nigerian cities on a van, immerse themselves in the cities they visit, hopefully not catch diarrhea, or run into any kind of road mishaps, accidents and insurgents included.
Their expectations are simple for the most part. Ultimately, at the end of this journey, a calculable distance of 4220.8km, they each want to be changed by the things they have seen and the people they have met. They want to have fun, find courage, discover how easy it is to extract ‘truth’, elusive as it is, in a nation where people prefer to forget. But, it is also a little more complex than that. On their website, their mission statement reads thus:
“Hundred years after the northern and southern Nigerian protectorates were amalgamated into a single colony, the remarkable diversity of the country remains apparent. In 2016, Invisible Borders will aim to map this diversity through a road trip across Nigeria; hoping, as a result, to underscore the borders that are both inscribed and elusive within the country.”

Invisible Borders 2016 Participants L-R: Emmanuel Iduma, Yinka Elujoba, Eloghosa Osunde, Uche Okonkwo, Zainab Odunsi, Yagazie Emezi and Emeka Okereke

To achieve this broad aim, the participants are each expected to produce a body of work. The writers are expected to write ‘long travel essays’ up to 7000 words, the photographers will each produce photo essays of some sort. Invisible borders will collate short personal narratives by residents of the towns and cities they pass through, the aim of which is to put together a crowd-sourced account of contemporary Nigeria.  A loose and non-linear documentary film will also be produced from this trip, to “underscore the improbability of reducing Nigeria to a single story or way of telling.”

Participants Uche Okonkwo, Zainab Odunsi, Yagazie Emezi

During a press briefing, the participants present, Zainab O. Odunsi, Emeka Okereke, Uche Okonkwo, Yagazie Emezi, Emmanuel Iduma, Yinka Elujoba, Eloghosa Osunde shared their reasons for taking on the challenge of a 46-day roadtrip spanning southern and northern Nigerian towns and cities, the capital of the insurgency plagued Borno state inclusive

Invisible Borders 2016 Participants

Emeka Okereke who was part of the 2014 Trans-Continental roadtrip from Lagos(Nigeria) to Sarajevo(Bosnia), this trip is a chance to interrogate the space between Nigeria’s history and Nigeria’s ‘now’. He emphasized that his choice to be a part of this first trans-Nigerian trip was not as much inspired by some grand idea to change the world, as it was inspired by a need to claim what is lost, abandon the notion of the self for an opportunity to exchange identities, to find answers, to produce knowledge and to negotiate the spaces where geological borders divide us.
Borders Within 2016: The Trans-Nigerian Road Trip is sponsored by Diamond Bank, Peugeot and Nikon Nigeria, with Olisa.tv as one of its media partners. The travel blog, Ktravula run by Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún will publish interviews of each participant.