In 1978, anti-apartheid activist Tim Jenkin hatched an audacious prison escape plan. From his cell, he would make his own wooden keys to open the prison doors to freedom.

Presenter: Jo Fidgen

Producer: Thomas Harding Assinger

Picture: Tim Jenkin

Credit: Raw Television

Akintunde Akinleye is an award-winning photographer who’s spent much of his career in Lagos, Nigeria, photographing the firefighters battling pipeline explosions around the gridlocked city. One photograph of the aftermath of an explosion changed his life when he won an international photography award.

Producer: Emily Webb

Photo: A Lagos firefighter douses himself in water

Credit: Akintunde Akinleye

Outlook’s Abdulmalik Fahd drops in on Spoof Animations, one of Nigeria’s newest cartoon studios, where a new generation of Nigerians are drawing new kinds of superheroes. We talk to Ayodele Elegba who founded the studio and decided to recruit Emmanuel Oluwasegun and Tunrayo Oloyede, young animators who bring to life characters that reflect their own experience and tell the stories of their fellow Nigerians.

Producer: Emily Webb

Photo: Jinx the superhero

Credit: Spoof Animations

In this special episode of Outlook, as part of our Lagos series, Helen Oyibo has been hearing remarkable testimony from three people whose lives have been affected by the confraternity system in Nigerian universities, student societies which have morphed into violent criminal gangs.

Roland, who is speaking under a pseudonym, unwillingly joined a confraternity on campus in an attempt to find protection from a rival confraternity. He told us about the violent initiation ceremony he had to endure, and how he found himself trapped in the society, unable to leave.

Professor Wole Soyinka is a revered writer in Nigeria, the first African to win the Nobel Prize for literature. He knows more about the history of these societies than most – he was a founding member of the first Nigerian confraternity in the late 1960s, ‘The Pyrates’, a light-hearted social group which originally had no hint of the criminality that permeates these societies today.

Finally, we hear from Nigerian journalist Omoyele Sowore. In the early 1990s he was president of the student union at the University of Lagos, and decided to stand up to its confraternities and the violence they were inflicting on campus. For his resistance he was targeted and brutally attacked, but returned to campus to defy the gangs and sit his final exams.

Producer: Harry Graham

Picture credit: Getty Images

Outlook’s Abdulmalik Fahd undertakes a challenge: to travel around Lagos by car and canoe to record four interviewees in one day. First stop a police station, to talk to Celestina Nwankwo Kalu, the police officer who helped save Friday Ajobor, a gun attack victim, and who now calls him her son.

Next, a voyage into the floating neighbourhood of Makoko – one of the biggest slums in the city – to meet Abigail Mpke, the make-up artist mapping her neighbourhood.

Then on to a busy market to meet Ernestina Okwuchukwu, aka Madame Burgess. She was left with nothing but a new-born baby when her husband died, but her determination to feed her young family and talent for the Lagos hustle led her to become a top car tyre salesman in the area.

And finally, we hear from Opemipo Kehinde and… Opemipo Kehinde. Now husband and wife, they tell us how their love story started on the streets of Lagos, during an evening commute.

Producer: Emily Webb

Photo: Traffic on the streets of Lagos

Credit: Getty Images

In the first of four programmes from Lagos, Nigeria, Helen Oyibo meets the artists and revolutionaries who have shaped the country. A poet, playwright and essayist, Wole Soyinka became Africa’s first Nobel Laureate, and endured two years of political detention during Nigeria’s civil war.

Femi Kuti is a musician and son of the legendary Fela Kuti. He tells Helen about how growing up in the shadow of one of Nigeria’s most famous musicians has shaped his life and own musical career. He also gives us a tour of a Lagos institution, The New Afrika shrine.

Falz is part of the new generation of rebel artists in Nigeria – his parents are both famous activists and he's a popular Afrobeats star whose subversive music has got him into trouble with the government. He reveals why he's continuing his parents' work through his music.

Presenter: Helen Oyibo

Producer: Harry Graham

Picture: Falz, Femi Kuti, Wole Soyinka

Credits: Getty Images, BBC

Jacke Van Woerkom is rebuilding her life after a horrific event in her family. The experience has also changed the way she looks at the parents of murderers. Surrounding herself with women who have gone through a deep trauma has helped her recover emotionally from the fact that her son attempted to kill his wife and children and then took his own life. Jacke talks honestly about this devastating experience.

Jacke has written a book called: Grieving moms, finding hope: resurfacing.

Presenter: Emily Webb

Producer: Deiniol Buxton

Picture: Jacke Van Woerkom

Credit: Holly Heine

Candice Mama’s father was murdered by Eugene de Kock a notorious police colonel in apartheid South Africa, when she was just eight months old. She grew up knowing this, but it was only when she was a teenager that she realised she needed to deal with the severe stress it was causing her. She set out to find out everything she could about how her father had died and eventually came to the realisation that the only way to free herself would be to forgive the man who had murdered him. But the story doesn't stop there. In 2014 Candice and her family ended up meeting Eugene de Kock and in an extraordinary encounter, Candice not only forgave him but at the end of the meeting, they hugged. She has written a book about her extraordinary journey called "Forgiveness Redefined".

Producer: June Christie

Image: Candice Mama at a conference

Credit: Sbu Kandee

Dutch rapper Sor and his group, Black Acid, were rising rapidly through the Amsterdam music scene. They seemed poised to hit the big time when Sor was struck down by a mysterious illness, culminating in the devastating morning when he woke up without any hearing at all. The road to recovery was long, but with the help of technology, Sor was able to regain some hearing and start making music again. He told Andile Masuku about how deafness has both affected and inspired him.

Producers: Andile Masuku and Katy Davis

Photo: Sor performing on stage

Credit: Reinout Bos

Eliska Tanzer was born in Slovakia into a very unusual family. Her mother’s family were Romany sex workers, while her largely absent father was a Nazi sympathiser. The local school refused to educate her because of her heritage, so Eliska grew up illiterate. When she was 13, Eliska was trafficked into Britain, where despite suffering exploitation and sexual violence, she was able to gain an education and become a writer. She spoke to Jo Fidgen about her life.

This programme contains descriptions of child exploitation and sexual violence which some listeners may find distressing.

If you’ve been affected by any of the issues in this programme, you can find details of organisations offering information and support at this address: bbc.co.uk/actionline

Producer: Thomas Harding Assinder

Photo: Getty Images