UNMASKED: Leadership, Trust and Covid-19 in Nigeria, the feature documentary film focused on the management of the Covid-19 pandemic in the country will premiere on Friday, May 7 at the Civic Centre, Ozumba Mbadiwe Street, Victoria Island, Lagos at 2 pm.
The event will feature eminent speakers including the Governor of Lagos State, Mr Babajide Sanwo-Olu, and the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr Godwin Emefiele, as well as the Director General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu.
Others are the Lagos State Commissioner for Health, Prof Akin Abayomi; the Founder and CEO of the Chair Center Group, Mrs Ibukun Awosika and Mr Tosin Runsewe, Chairman/Non-Executive Director of Evercare Hospital Lekki, Lagos. The Conversation will be moderated by Kadaria Ahmed, herself a renowned journalist and media content producer.
A collaborative work between Daria Media and Zuri24 Media, Unmasked… is produced/directed by Femi Odugbemi and co-produced/presented by Kadaria Ahmed. It features interviews and insights from people drawn from the medical, political and financial sectors of the society that are at the forefront of dealing with the covid 19 pandemic and its fall out; as well as regular people who are victims of the virus in different ways.
The documentary was released in March, and first screened at the 2021 iREPRESENT International Documentary Film Festival (iREP) to critical acclaim by an international audience comprising filmmakers, media scholars, students and film enthusiasts across four continents.
The event of Friday, May 7 is, however, the premiere of the docu-feature. Following the screening of the film will be a CONVERSATION around the issues thrown up by the documentary. Specifically, the conversation will centre on how the public and private sector can collaborate for the development of a robust and effective public health care system.
Subsequent screening of the documentary will also take place in Kano, Ibadan, Kaduna and Port Harcourt. In those cities the conversations will revolve around the training and retention of medical personnel in Nigeria and the provisions of basic health care as a prerequisite for the development of robust human resources.
In giving the background to the production of the documentary, Odugbemi said: “The Covid-19 pandemic has turned the world on its head and hit the world’s most populous black nation Nigeria with predictable ferocity. With its soft underbelly of corruption, poor healthcare infrastructure, weak systems and an ever-increasing number of its population below the poverty line, the impact of Covid-19 Pandemic has been substantial, but could this also be an opportunity for a reset?” This is the context in which the conversation will hold on Friday after the documentary has been screened.
The co-producer and presenter of the documentary, Kadaria Ahmed, states: “It is the hope of the producers of the documentary that beyond documenting the Nigerian story of covid, Unmasked acts as a the catalyst for a conversation on shortcomings in our public health sector that were unmasked by Covid.”