Tafigawalo Radio Drama

The drama uses an entertainment-education approach, where real- to-life characters experience, and learn from, different situations. The long 78-episode plot (broadcasting over 9 months) was used to portray different aspects of the key issues, and demonstrate how the characters are impacted over time. According to PMC, "A drama of that duration allows many issues to be addressed. The characters in the drama allow people to see themselves and evolve with the characters from someone without information or with misinformation to someone who is better informed about life saving issues."

Tafigawalo is set in a fictionalised country named Saboba Republic. Story lines run through four settings representative of geopolitical zones of Nigeria, with cities like Asozuma. One storyline centres on Mbakwo, who pleads with her husband to give her body time to recover between pregnancies. He retaliates by taking a second wife. Rashima is a 14-year-old girl, a good student who is attracted to an older and tough-living classmate, Chickie. Another story focuses on Mbede, the father of three girls and a boy, whose wife believes it is a waste of money to educate their daughters. Another character is John, a hot-tempered man who, when drunk, takes out his aggression on his wife and sometimes his children.

Tafigawalo began broadcasting in the Pidgin language on three radio stations in three southern Nigerian states: Akwa Ibom (Planet FM), Enugu (Enugu Broadcasting Corporation), and Lagos (Bond FM). Through a partnership with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the broadcast was subsequently expanded to several more southeastern Nigerian states, starting June 2014, to reach the states of Abia, Benue, Cross River, Ebonyi, the Federal Capital Territory, Imo, and rebroadcasting in Lagos.

HIV/AIDS, reproductive health, safe motherhood, girls’ education, gender-based violence

Family planning is identified as one of Nigeria’s most pressing health and human rights concern. According to PMC, "only 14.1% of people in Nigeria say they use any form of contraception, and UNFPA estimates that anywhere from 100,000 to 1 million women suffer from obstetric fistula." Tafigawalo also stresses the importance of girls’ education; "only 43% of Nigerian women obtain a secondary education."

According to PMC, "formative research has shown that the vast majority (more than 90%) of Nigerians turn to the radio for entertainment."