AWARD NOMINATED RADIO DOCUMENTARY PRODUCER
I am an award nominated documentary producer with experience of producing documentaries for radio and television in Europe and Africa.
Documentary making allows me to utilise my strong research background and attention to detail with creative storytelling - keeping the audience hooked!
BBC WORLD TV ‘OUR WORLD’
Watch the BBC Our World Documentary here: Nigeria’s Kidnapped Children
BBC WORLD SERVICE AND RADIO 4 ‘ASSIGNMENT’
Listen to the BBC Radio Documentary here: Nigeria’s Kidnapped Children
Produced for radio and television in Nigeria by Naomi Scherbel-Ball
Kidnappers have seized more than a thousand students and staff from schools in a series of raids across northern Nigeria. The wave of abductions has devastating consequences for the country, which already has the highest number of children out of education anywhere in the world. Parents face extortionate demands in exchange for the freedom of their sons and daughters and many families in Africa's most populous nation are now too afraid to send their children to class. Mayeni Jones travels across north-western Nigeria to meet those affected and find out what's fuelling Nigeria's kidnap crisis.
BBC WORLD SERVICE AND RADIO 4 ‘CROSSING CONTINENTS’
Listen to the BBC Radio Documentary here: Searching for Wisdom in Lagos
Produced for radio in Nigeria by Naomi Scherbel-Ball
A young woman is desperately searching for her brother in Lagos. On the night of 20th October, Nigerian soldiers opened fire at a peaceful demonstration camped at the Lekki tollgate in Lagos. The government say they fired into the air, but witnesses insist that unarmed protesters came under deliberate attack. Amnesty International says that 12 people died.
The incident has traumatised a highly popular political reform movement that began as a demand to close down the S.A.R.S., a notoriously corrupt and brutal police squad.
In the aftermath, many of the movement’s young supporters are keeping a low profile. Some have had their bank accounts frozen and passports seized. Others have even fled overseas, in fear of their lives.
The BBC’s Nigeria correspondent Mayeni Jones has been talking to some of them, including a witness to the Lekki shooting, and Peace, who is tirelessly searching for her brother, Wisdom, who is still missing after attending the demonstration. Mayeni finds a country whose traditionally deferential society and elderly leadership seem suddenly vulnerable; shaken by a perfect storm of youthful idealism, social media activism, and the crippling economic fallout of the Covid pandemic.