The other day, the Director General, National Orientation Agency, Dr. Garba Abari, speaking, said: “A significant percentage of our younger ones will not even remember that Nigeria is the original name of our country” as he pushed for Nigerians to stop calling the country Naija.
I engaged Mr. Olateju Oyelakin, the ace comedian popularly known as Teju Baby Face, just before his interview with Garba, two weeks ago in Lagos. I wanted him to take up the DG on why the NOA acts like it is set up to propagate agendas in the interest of the party in power instead of a national agenda that defies the interests of whoever is president per time or whatever party is at the centre. Mike Omeri, the immediate past DG of NOA, ran the organisation like it was the media and propaganda arm of the last government. If the NOA is 90 per cent dead and irrelevant, Omeri, in my opinion, contributed 89 per cent of that. But the current DG, while seemingly now interested in an agenda that is about our collective interest has started off by missing the point completely. This is a big example in how to miss the point. Calling Nigeria Naija is not the issue.
Small Lesotho is defined as The Kingdom In The Sky; picture-esque Madagascar is also called The Red Island; Rwanda is called the Land of a Thousand Hills and South Africa is the Rainbow Nation. The United States is Uncle Sam; Chile is the land of Poets; Iceland is the Land of Fire and Ice; what is Nigeria? We do not know at the moment! Someone should tell Mr. DG that Nigeria will always be officially Nigeria, that it is okay to funkify it into “Naija” for cool points, that there is nothing wrong with that, because Naija is part of our identity now and our younger ones will not have issues remembering ‘Nigeria’ because the older ones know when to use Nigeria and when to use Naija. Or are the teachers in their schools now teaching them ‘How the British Colonised Naija’ now? Or the “Constitutional Development of Naija from 1914 to 1999” is a topic now? Please! Let us not try to justify the existence of the National Orientation Agency because really, it is free to die if it can’t find a reason for it to be funded.
Another recent Nigerian anomaly is the Big Brother Nigeria. Nigerians are asking tough questions about the reality show but we are mostly asking the wrong question as usual. We are complaining about the so-called immorality being espoused by the show as though whatever is being reflected in the show is not a telling reality in Nigeria. Or is it our usual, ‘it is okay to do bad, but at least keep it in the house’ mentality? The show is rated 18, it means that before you commit to watching it, you must know that there is a likelihood that there will be pictures and sounds that should not be fed children and teenagers. If you, an adult, then goes ahead to watch it, only to complain about immorality, sorry, you are a hypocrite. And it is impossible for your kids to feed on it consistently, if you, the parent or guardian is not also binging on it. Back at school, their friends with the abnormal liberty to watch anything on TV in their own homes can tell them stories about what went down but the chances of your kids seeing a lot of Big Brother Naija without you seeing a lot of it yourself is pretty low!
If you want to make change happen in a system, fighting against the prevailing reality is not your best bet. Life comes with contradictions; such that, the more you fight certain things, the more people want to indulge in it. To make change happen, you have to offer an alternate reality. Let people have a competing choice. I’d rather schoolchildren tune in to Cowbellpedia Mathematics Quiz competition instead of Big Brother. But if you as the parent continues to complain about the show you don’t want the children to see while completely ignoring the one you want them to see, you’d have made the un-preferred the popular. We shouldn’t always be about what we do not want; we should always pay more attention to what we want. If you want better content than whatever goes on in Big Brother House, create it; if you can’t create it, propagate what someone else has created it. We are a country of some 170 million people; some of us cannot decide what the rest of us watch in our homes. Let people choose what they want to feed their eyes on. Until the Federal Government sets up the National Moral Police Force, the National Hypocrisy Commission must keep its cosmetic morality to itself.
On the issue of the show being hosted in South Africa, here is another misplaced anger. Where is our recuperating President currently being hosted? Where do private jet owners in Lagos prefer to park their jets due to the expensive cost of parking them in Lagos? Ghana! Where do our political thieves save their stolen money when not saving it andreyakubucally? Anywhere but Nigeria. Where do the rich send their kids for studies? The US, UK, UAE, Malaysia etc. Where do the not so rich Nigerians send their kids when they can’t afford private universities here? Uganda, Kenya, Ghana, Sudan etc. Where do our fruits often come from? Benin Republic. If most Nigerians had a choice, where do you think they’d rather be? You know the answer. Let us stop pretending about our reality. Life in Nigeria is hard and tough, the more we pretend about the effects of this reality, the more we ask the wrong questions. Big Brother Naija will cost the organisers a lot more to host in Nigeria because they’d need an extra budget to power the house for starters and they’d need to move several hi-tech equipment over; they’d need to house the technical team in expensive hotels after finding it pretty tough to get them visas and while at that, they’d need to protect them from the now ubiquitous kidnappers.
Patriotism is a beautiful ideal and you cannot say President Buhari is not a patriotic man. But you see, when it comes to life and death issues, when it comes to making rational decisions like, “what kind of education do I want my children to get?”; “when it comes to ‘what’s the best holiday my money can afford?”, patriotism often takes a humble seat, because it knows enough to know that it is not built on a vacuum. It is built on a two way street; your country cannot ask patriotism of you if it does not even care enough whether you are dead or alive. Or do we now know the names of the thousands of people killed by Boko Haram? Do we have the names of all the citizens killed extrajudicially? Let us even start by protecting lives and property then go a step further by dignifying the dead whenever we fall short of protecting citizens.
One day, we can justifiably wonder how irrational a company can be; to leave Nigeria where it is much easier and cheaper to host a world class show, then take it to another country that offers less value at a more expensive price. Because you know what? Big Brother is not a charity show; it is a business. The winner gets N25m and an SUV. You can bet though, the organisers make at least that amount via the daily voting to keep housemates in the house. Then, do the numbers for the 11 or so weeks it gets to run for, do the numbers for the advertising and then the numbers for the partners. Why is no one asking why Big Brother Naija is hardly even a Nigerian idea. It is just a foreign idea being served to a Nigerian audience using Nigerian ingredients. We can do better as a country but we must start by deciding to get angry at the right things. And people.
This piece was originally published in Punch newspaper of 01/03/2017. Republished here with permission.
에그벳
Zhu Houzhao는 식별하기 위해 열심히 노력했고 지금 막 이 사람이 Master Xie라는 것을 깨달았습니다.
북 오브 데드
이 책의 첫 번째 도메인 이름을 기억하십시오: .. 모바일 버전 읽기 URL: m.
라이즈 오브 올림푸스
아쉬운 마음을 참지 못하고 떠나려는데 뒤에서 어깨를 툭툭 치는 사람!
마종 웨이즈 2
그래서 Fang Jifan은 밤을 이용하여 서둘러 떠났습니다.
신규 슬롯 사이트
Ma Wensheng은 정직하고 경외감을 불러 일으켰습니다. “Ma Wensheng, 당신은 전쟁 부 장관입니다.”
에그슬롯
모두가 진실을 알고 있으며 이러한 교훈은 오랫동안 봄과 가을에 남아 있습니다.
마종 웨이즈
그는 급히 본당으로 갔고 푸인은 우연히 오늘 홀에 앉아 차를 마시고 있었다.
79 슬롯
국경 마을 사람들에게 타타르족의 공포는 정말 깊은 기억으로 남습니다.
꽁 머니 슬롯
“피를 뱉고 있군.” 류안의 얼굴이 한심했다.
아리아나 슬롯
이 모든 것은… 미리 계획을 세워야 하고, 그 어떤 것도 엉성할 수 없습니다.
슬롯 머신 사이트
실험실은 Xishan의 다양한 연구 기관 건물 중 하나입니다.
온라인 슬롯
사실 적응이 되면서 자연스럽게 무릎에 굳은 살이 닳았지만 그렇게 불편하지는 않았습니다.
슬롯 사이트
Zhu Chengdao : “Li Shilang, 이것은 … 어떤 기념관을 작성해야할지 모르겠습니다.”
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스네이크 아레나 드림 드롭
이것이 얼마나 많은 능력인지 상상할 수 없으며 구름과 비를 돌리는 데 몇 달 밖에 걸리지 않습니다.
슬롯 커뮤
“발굴, 당신은 무엇을 발굴하고 있습니까?” Zhu Houzhao가 놀라서 물었다.
머니 트레인2
갓 태어난 송아지가 호랑이를 무서워하지 않는다는 것은 사실입니다. 그는 사람입니다.
스핀 슬롯
Zhu Houzhao는 목소리를 낮추고 꾸짖었습니다. “여기서 뭐하는거야? 가.”
프라그마틱 슬롯 체험
Fang Jifan은 놀랐습니다. “전하가 말하는 아버지가 누구인지 모르겠습니다.”
오션 슬롯
패배한 반란군 병사들은 투구와 갑옷을 허겁지겁 버리고 울부짖는 귀신과 늑대처럼 진영 안으로 후퇴했다.
toto 사이트
따라서 Hongzhi 황제는 기념물을 예리하게 찾았습니다.
슬롯 게임 사이트
Fang Jifan은 오늘 그렇게 조급하지 않고 손을 흔들며 “할 일이 있습니다. 수다를 떨자”라고 말했습니다.
퀵 슬롯
갑자기 “이봐, 황태자 전하는 어디 있니? “라고 말한 것은 Zhu Zhiyu였습니다.
토토 픽 사이트
타타르족은 제멋대로이고 반항적이어서 풀을 뜯는 것은 호랑이를 산으로 돌려보내는 것과 같습니다.
무료 슬롯
“이 Suleiman은 앞으로 나에게 맡기십시오. “Zhu Houzhao가 자신있게 말했습니다.
블랙 맘바
하지만 오늘은 분명히 달랐고 마차는 매우 활기차게 움직였습니다.
슬롯 바카라
“폐하, 부끄러운 부탁이 있습니다.” 쉬징이 떨리는 목소리로 말했다.”폐하, 지금 낙심하시겠군요.” 그가 대담하게 말했다.
배트맨 토토 합법
그들이 예전처럼 떼를 짓지 않았다는 것뿐입니다.
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