JUST MY OPINION
In the year 2021, we were in a club in Jamaica 🇯🇲 and out of the blues came Nigerian music for almost two hours. Me and my man Wells partied like there was no yesterday.
In the United States of America (USA), I noticed that virtually everyday I will hear one Nigerian musician or the other on the radio.
On a recent family vacation to Tobago while out in the Caribbean Sea, voila! the captain put on Flavor back-to-back, then Wizkid’s “Bend down, bend down pause.”
On BBC every Saturday, 1 am GMT, is a one hour segment on African music and it’s mainly Nigerian artists.
Same thing with Nigerian movies.
10-20 years ago that was not the case.
When Majek Fashek and the Mandators, Jide OBI, Alex O etc. were trying so hard to be Jamaicans without the patois (patuá), the Nigerian musical trend was not recognized until they finally decided to “be original,” embracing themselves wholeheartedly including their language/pidgin English and their own accents. There were no more funny monkey business trying to sound Jamaican or American phonetically.
The entertainment industry is one of the positive things going for us and efforts need to be made by the Nigerian academia to learn from them/ understudy what they are doing right and replicate it to other sectors in Nigeria (industry/economy/politics).
America did it with Hollywood just like India did it with Bollywood.
The truth is that authentic, successful entertainment industry involves a lot of technological innovations and artistic ingenuity and Nollywood and the Nigerian music industry appear to be doing well in adapting to these but most especially they are authentically original. You can’t mistake afrobeat for “Rap.”
What can our political class learn from them? Maybe it’s time to rethink this whole presidential system to something “original and affordable.”
Since both the political class that steals with the pen and the “common criminals” that steal with computer and guns all want to impress the traditional rulers and obtain various traditional titles believing same to be validation from the “people”(?), can we then retune our system to include these traditional rulers and remove some of the legislators, via house of chiefs or make politics really public service by election of part time legislators that are paid only sitting allowances while they hold on to their day jobs (making them full time has not prevented more than half of them from sleeping in the chambers or being completely absent while pursuing other personal preoccupations instead of doing the peoples business)?
Incorporation of the “Ama-ala system” in the east? Swearing in office holders with “Ogun traditional religion in the west or whatever religion the states prefer?
Our political leaders should stop being sworn in with the phrase “so help me God.” They have refused God’s help for over 53 years. Rather it should be replaced with “if I fail to consciously carry out my constitutional duties then —- God, Satan, Ogun, Amadioha, Allah, my wife (whatever the person believes in) should kill me.” Let’s try cause and effect and see what happens.
The bottom line is that this system is not working because it’s not original and has not been “Nigerianized” to reflect our own peculiarities and until then we will be fiddling while the country burns down to ashes.
Finally, the Academia needs to also study the “ boy – boy” or apprentice system of trading and really extrapolate it to every Nigerian business school
Just thinking out aloud today but will leave it to history to determine if there is some vision in my thought process today and hopefully someone can expound on it much more.
God bless
Emeka Boris Oji is a USA-based Physician
5/27/2022
