Clarence A. Peters’ “Scratch”: In Nigeria, We Are Symptoms of a Broken System

As a Lagosian, you learn quickly that Lagos and its characters are persistent and uncaring intruders. From fellow passengers that invite themselves into your phone conversation, the familiar and strange voices that throw unsolicited advice about your choice of clothing, the conversation-deprived cab driver that breaks through your stoic exterior, to neighbors that splatter decibel-high songs into your curated space and silent mind, Lagos and its occupants crawl into your curated private space and mind. An enthusiastic and unfazed meddler, it cares less about your discomfort but its preference for ephemeral small talk. But, occasionally, this stray-cat-like conversation and rift welcome life-long friends. This mindless and attentive desire for intrusion is what unites the five characters in Clearance A. Peters’ Scratch, a five-episode show currently streaming on YouTube. 

At the center of the show are five distinctive characters: Ifedayo/Fay Fay (Favour Etim), an adult content creator; Runo (Celia Okechukwu), a religious masseur who reluctantly transacts sex; Oyiza (Hauwa ‘Nananikeju’ Issa), the silent neighbor whose body hoards trauma, Onaka (Mofehintola Jebutu), the frustrated community dick; and Dubem (Tony Sunmola), the silent and mysterious neighbor, connected by their shared apartment. Due to the Lagos housing crisis and towering house rent, it isn’t surprising for a two-three, or in this case, five-bedroom apartment to be converted, by vicious Lagos agents, into a quasi-face-me-I-face-you apartment. For the unfamiliar, each occupant monopolizes a room, while the kitchen, parlor, and corridor, if it exists, is a shared space, a makeshift common room. This is the living arrangement of Peters’ characters. The arrangement, as expected, comes with mind-numbing baggage: Runo and Oyiza disturb others with their prayer songs, Onaka’s sexual rendezvous wilfully transport itself across the thin wall, Ifedayo’s shouts for order defeat sanity, and Dubem’s silence inspires more questions than answers.

Divided into five-episodes, each episode follows a single familiar pattern: a character and their heavy story get introduced, the Genesis of their trauma, often a relative, visits the house that will in retrospect morph into a haven. The neighbors, except Dubem, solidarize with the episode’s character in focus and help confront their trauma, and the episode ends with the neighborly bond growing stronger. The five episodes create a coveted utopia that it isn’t doubtful of. Despite their growing bond, there are internal and external cracks. For one, Onaka still views the female neighbors as a possible sexual checklist. Dubem, who introduces crime, violence, and the Nigerian police, still lives in the house. Thus, as their bond transcends the borders of strangers to friends and family, the cracks grow. 

It was Karl Marx who said religion is the opium of the masses. It won’t be out of place to add sex to the mix. For decades, films like Abuja Connection, Oloture, Bariga Sugar, and others have reflected on how Nigeria’s economic crisis and family pressure compel Nigerian women into sex work. In Scratch, Ifedayo and Runo transact sex to fulfill unavoidable economic and familial needs. As the series progresses, you notice the exhaustion, irritation, and self-hatred resident on their faces. But their violent economic reality pushes them back to the metaphorical lion’s den. For Onaka, his unstoppable sexual affairs, we will learn, is occassioned by a childhood sexual abuse. Ditto Oyiza. 

There’s a tendency to ask why the characters, except Dubem and Ifedayo, are sexual assault victims. Is the series or the director obsessed with sexual assault victims?  Especially in relation to  Peters’ Inside Life that anchors its narrative around the subject. Those might be valid arguments. But allow me to introduce another argument. Without introducing statistics, almost weekly, a report of sexual violence gets centered on Nigerian Twitter. The Lagos Domestic and Sexual Violence Agency (Lagos DSVA) account, one of the few working governmental agencies, is frequently inundated with reported cases of assault. Unfortunately, male victims, courtesy of the men-don’t-cry narrative, rarely report assault. Statistically, in Nigeria, roughly 1 in 3 women and 1 in 10 men experience sexual violence in their lifetimes, with children making up the majority of reported cases. Over 85% of survivors seeking medical care at facilities are female, and alarmingly, the majority of abusers are well known to the victims

Thus, the series and the characters’ sexual abuse history is reflective of the statistics of reported and unreported assault. Without crumbling their humanity and reducing them to mere victims, the series creates an accommodating environment of safety and resistance. The abusers might not have met fatal ends or legal justice but, cleaving unto religion, the victims curse their abusers. That, in Nigeria where reported rape and sexual assault cases dissolve into oblivion, and Nigerians have heightened religious loyalty and responsibility, the victims’ religious curse is a quasi, albeit non-legislative justice. 

The film industry is, by structural and self-imposed hurdles, populated with timid artists and filmmakers. Peters is an outlier. The characters’ erotic language and dialogue aren’t reined in nor in euphemistic hue; it’s raw. The characters aren’t scared of moving around their cramped and disorganized rooms, that’s a corpus of their life. The camera, handled by Peters, is happy and eager to capture the beautiful chaos of their room, not with exhibitionist vigour but tourist temperance. There’s an all-conquering and lively eagerness to capture the environment that’s reminiscent of Dare Olaitan‘s Ojujokoro or Ousmane Sembène’s films that show the stark reality of Senegalese people. The actors are comfortable with playing with their characters while entering unprecedented zones. The series, from the acting, directing, writing, to the post-production department, is colonized with creativity that moves with reckless creative abandon and liberation.