I attended yesterday and found it very interesting.

I really commend the guy for his efforts considering he made the film whilst holding down a stressful full time job and financed it himself. He certainly demonstrated real dedication.

I found it useful for several reasons:

1) The documentary (although he didn't call it that) filled a void for me in terms of providing some sort of narrative about (modern) Nigerian history. I've tried to read various archives myself but it can be quite difficult to make sense of lots of dry facts and see how they all fit together in the grand scheme of things.

2) It's helped to clarify in my mind the role the British played in the genesis of Nigeria and I can now have a picture of who the key players were and the legacy of exploitation and corruption they left behind.

3) It was interesting to see how Nigeria seems to have been under the rule of a handful of people since 'independence' who are still key players. For instance, I did not know that president Yar'adua had been around both as military personnel in previous governments and now as a civilian leader. I already knew that he was the first university-educated president Nigeria had but the significance of this was not apparent to me until the film-maker in the post-viewing Q&A session said something about the folly of a minister (in previous governments) with a basic military education trying to broker oil deals with someone with a PhD in oil ecomonics!

So overall it was interesting and useful however I'm still not clear about what it means to be Nigerian because despite all the positive economic changes that have been occurring recently the bottom-line is that Nigeria was and still is some white man's creation and I don't think that we have yet really re-defined what it means to be Nigerian on our own African terms.