Femi LazarusCEO at Femi Lazarus Consulting

Storytelling shapes how we see the world, its people, and its places.

25 Mar 2026 · 3 min

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2:56

In this excerpt from the Declassified Podcast, Femi Lazarus argues that storytelling determines how places and peoples are perceived worldwide. He criticizes Nollywood for portraying Nigeria in a negative, corruption‑focused light, contrasting it with American media that markets the United States as a "Heavenly City" and sells its stories globally. Lazarus reflects on his own travels to Venice and New York’s Times Square, noting how cinematic portrayals turn those locations into tourist magnets, while African sites such as Makoko, Victoria Lake, and Erija Waterfall lack comparable narrative promotion. He contends that Africans have not packaged their stories in an investable, positive way, and that the real economic power lies not in traditional advertising but in the ability to sell compelling narratives. The conversation calls for Africans to become the architects of their own stories, leveraging their rich cultural and natural assets to attract global attention and investment.

Chapters

What's your perspective about Nigeria? Corruption. Who acted the movies that showed Nigeria in the bad light? Nollywood. Who acted the movies that show America like, like, like the Heavenly City? The Heavenly City. Americans. People sold their stories in good light. We sold our stories in bad light. Who architected what we have now? We ourselves. So it's not just them, even we. The reason why Jackpa will work was not that they introduced you to it, to it when they say come. You were introduced to this time you were growing up. Yes, it's simple engineering. Think about it. Wow, this you say is so true. The biggest money is not made from advert, it's made from wiring. Wow. Any advert, anytime you have to say get this product, get this product, get this product, you failed at something. You sell stories, not product.
Yes, yes.
And the African story has not been sold, not in the light that it should be sold, not in the light that it is investable. I was at Venice. I was at Venice, and I got interested in going to Venice even though I had a program in Padova, which was just an hour train away from Venice. I needed to go to Venice because I read the book Merchant of Venice. Yeah. So I, I needed to see Venice. Yes. I mean, I've seen movies like Murder on Orient Express, movies that showed Venice as— and I mean, so I mean, I wanted to get to Venice, and I got to Venice. Sweet place. You see people from different nations. Chinese were there, um, different nations. I mean, I think that's the place I've seen the largest cluster of different nations gathering. But I was surprised when I got to Venice. The first thing I said to myself is, what do they have in Venice that we don't have in Makoko. It's a body of water. We didn't build stories around our own. That's why nobody goes there. We have too much we can build stories around. We have too much— it's storytelling. I went to, I went to New York. Um, what's this street called? Um, what's this street? Times Square, New York. I got to Times Square. Fantastic. Again, like Venice, people, close-ups all over the world, taking stories. I'm taking videos, recording TikTok videos, all those things. What's special about Times Square? Smelly. Wow. Screens, they've acted movies there, showed it again and again. Everybody wants to get there. The movie shows you places, you're interested. We have too many things in Nigeria that we don't tell stories about. Across Africa, yes. Victoria Lake, we have all these things there. Erija Waterfall, yes. What we call our thing is what the world call it. Listen, the greatest marketer in the world is America. What they sell? Stories. Wow.
Declassified Podcast is now streaming on YouTube and Spotify.