September Recap: The More Things Change and Some Cool Collaborations

Inside: We're taking fellowship applications again.

In July 1995, Nigerian athletes lodged at the Bembo Games Village in Surulere, Lagos, to prepare for the 6th All-Africa Games in Zimbabwe. The officials in charge, however, were anything but ready to host them. Athletes complained about wading through waterlogged bathrooms, fighting chronic malaria because mosquito nets were nonexistent, and trekking from the lodge to the National Stadium because transport promises were unfulfilled.

By 2001, the setting changed, but the story remained similar. Ahead of the National Athletics Tournament in Ghana, officials of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN) were entangled in a scandal over missing kits. Free branded uniforms meant for athletes turned up on sale in Lagos sports shops instead.

Fast forward to 2025, world champion Tobi Amusan posted a video criticising the AFN for providing substandard and insufficient kits for the World Athletics Championships.

Three different decades, three different sets of athletes, and the same recurring challenges. It is precisely this cycle of neglect and unaccountability that makes our current inquiry, The More Things Change, all the more urgent.

What Happened in August 2025

At The August Event last month, we invited our community to sit with us, reflect on the work of the past few years, and see where we are headed. The response was massive. Hundreds of you turned up, filling the room with the kind of support that makes this work possible.

For those who couldn’t make it, here’s what we shared.

• We outlined our journey and, more importantly, the next two years under The More Things Change, our initiative to interrogate Nigeria’s recurring cycles of change.

• We also introduced Context by Archivi.ng, a tool in development to help you find faster, deeper meaning from our archives.

• Another highlight was the unveiling of Oral History, our commitment to record 10,000 hours of the lived experience of elderly Nigerians. You’ll hear more about the project as we prepare to fully launch.

• The day ended with the premiere of finished works from the first cohort of the Archivi.ng Fellowship.

We’re still flying high on social media

• In September, our stories reached further than ever.

• On Instagram, posts drew over 2 million views, reaching nearly 345,000 accounts and sparking more than 47,000 interactions.

• Similarly, on Twitter, we engaged over 80,000 people, with more than 1.5 million impressions.

• Much of this momentum came from carousel stories. One explored what Nigerians thought about abortion in 1975, surprising many with the unfiltered range of views from a period often misremembered.

• Another carousel story revisited the 1971 debate on whether Nigeria should retain English as its official language or adopt a local alternative. This was part of a collaboration with Lingawa, an organisation working to spark cultural pride and economic empowerment through African language learning.

• For our Previously in Nigeria series, Mariam produced videos on Nigeria’s first modern fashion house and the woman behind it, as well as on a 1972 economic experiment that tried to place Nigeria’s wealth in the hands of its citizens.

Our community of partners is growing

• Last month marked our first Nollywood collaboration. At the premiere of My Father’s Shadow, we created a throwback installation that transported guests to 1993, the year the film is set.

• For MOWAA Meets: Lagos, a programme by the Museum of West African Art (MOWAA), we developed and designed a large-scale digital map of cultural and historical ties between Lagos and Benin.

• The final stage of our partnership with Enchanted Concerts, first mentioned in the July recap, came to a close in Lagos after editions in three Canadian cities. At the concerts, orchestras gave new life to the music of Evi Edna-Ogholi, Alex Zitto, Bobby Benson, Victor Olaiya, Victor Uwaifo, and Osita Osadebe, while our wall of memory displayed archival press coverage of these artists stretching back to 1980.

• These partnerships reinforce the idea that our work is useful for everyone, and we’re always open to more collaborations.

One research we’re very proud of

Here’s a soft brag. A new podcast series, Fela Kuti: Fear No Man, premiered exclusively on Audible on September 18 and will roll out to all streaming platforms later in October. It’s hosted by award-winning radio and podcast producer Jad Abumrad, and produced by Higher Ground, co-founded by Barack and Michelle Obama (yes, the same ones who used to live in the White House).

When you listen to the series, almost every time you hear, “The newspapers said…,” “According to the newspapers…,” they’re from research carried out by Archivi.ng, led by Lekan, for the podcast team.

What’s Next: October 2025

Following their debut at The August Event, the first fellowship projects are now rolling out for public viewing.

We began with Yellow Sunset, Oghosa Ebengho’s animated short on the Nigerian Civil War, and the trailer for No Way Home: The Genesis of the Exodus, Aima Ojeamiren’s documentary on the historical context of Nigerian migration since independence.

In the coming weeks, two projects will follow: Documenting the Story Behind Black Orpheus, Shalom Kasim’s investigation of Nigeria’s first literary magazine, and Ordinary Nigerians in History, Samuel Ishola’s podcast on everyday people often overlooked in historical accounts.

On the final day of the month, we announced the launch of the second cohort of the fellowship.

We found a new home!

If you read the December 2024 dispatch, you’ll remember Archivi.ng began in Fu’ad’s garage. His home office hosted our first scanner in 2023, where we digitised the initial 50,000 newspaper pages that went live two years ago.

As our operations expanded, we outgrew that space and found a new home at CcHUB, a co-working space in Yaba, Lagos, where many small, dreamy teams plant their roots.

Now, a year later, we’re stepping into our own space, also in Yaba, overlooking SCIID, Panti. We’ll open officially in a couple of weeks, and I’ll have much more to say in the next dispatch.

See you on November 1.