INTERNATIONAL: A 15-year-old climate change activist Esohe Ozigbo struts a catwalk in an outfit made from discarded poly bags. Plastic waste is ubiquitous in the megacity, the commercial capital of Africa's most populous country with a population of more than 20 million people, where dropping litter is commonplace. To reinforce their message about the extent of the waste in Lagos, Ozigbo and her fellow activists attach plastic to fabric to create garments they wear in their annual "Trashion Show".
Ozigbo says, "The Trashion Show means a lot to me, I have been doing it for years and it is like a way of showcasing to everyone what we can do with the trash we so carelessly discard, and I really think it is like us making a statement and showing that we care about the environment and you should too, because we are just teenagers but we are trying to like make a change in the world."
A not-for-profit conservation group funded by donations Green Fingers Garden, works with young people to stage the shows in shopping malls.
The organisation’s founder Chinedu Mogbo says, "So we felt why not mix creativity with advocacy and that was why we actually went out with this. The students are the ones…together we went out, we picked up the plastics; we cleaned the environment. But rather than just taking everything maybe to a dumping site or so, we felt we get creative with it, so we decided to spruce things up and start the Trashion Show.''
Recently Ozigbo and her group waded through a mass of plastic bottles, food containers and bags that have blocked a waterway. Wearing gloves and masks, they pick up the discarded plastic and drop them into refuse bags. Their aim is to enable water to flow around the waterway in the city's Sangotedo district that was constructed to prevent flooding, while raising awareness of the problems caused by single use plastic.
Ozigbo has added, "We are the generation who are going to be like leading in a few years, and like the older people at the end of the day they will end up leaving this earth and we will be the ones left with it, so we need to start now because in a few years it is going to be too late to do anything.''
Ozigbo, who cites Swedish teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg as her inspiration, said she hoped the shows made shoppers think about their actions. She says that they are just teenagers but they are trying to make a change in the world as other young environmentally-conscious Nigerians may have already lost hope.
Photographer Abdulrasaq Babalola created a series of concept images about single-use plastic in 2019. He says, "I did this project in 2019 and since then nothing has really changed, nothing, let's be honest with ourselves nothing has really changed and if we don't restore the earth right now, the negative effect it is going to have on us, we won't be able to handle it."
Ozigbo and her counterparts don't intend to ever give up, whether they have to get down and dirty or "clean up nice" for the cause.
