Nigeria: How to become rich and famous

If the case of Nigeria’s clerical rave of the moment, Evangelist Funmilayo Adebayo (Mummy G.O), illustrates anything, it is the fact that Nigeria has a new, thriving culture. This culture has no use of ethics, morality or logic; it is mercantile realism writ large. For all practical purposes a heretic, the Iyana Ipaja preacher has amassed a tremendous following nationwide for her risqué, ribald and transparently demonic utterances precisely because those are the things that sell today. And it is why she’s having the time of her life in Dubai hotels. In a recent video, the evangelist claimed that having had decades of collaboration with demons while she worked as an agent of darkness, she had discovered the existence of a code in semen through which demons have the power to access people’s destiny. Angels would only prevent demons from accessing anyone’s first discharge if it comes naturally and they do not have iniquity lodged in their hearts.

The antichrist is going to be introduced through the World Cup, and saying “hello” is a passport to hell: the last “o” in the word is mere artifice. For a so-called preacher of holiness, Mummy G.O is demonstrably obsessed with pornography. During a recent sermon, she gave lurid details of her first sexual encounter after marriage, detailing how it had been difficult for her ex-boyfriend turned husband to perform the natural obligation because her virginity had been restored miraculously after she became a believer. In any case, Mummy G.O was monitoring DK Olukoya before he was born, and when he obtained power at the jungles of Ido Ajinare.

Gone are the days of Joseph Ayo Babalola and diminutive Orekoya of the “Gbowo re lo, gbobi re lo” (God doesn’t need your money or kola) fame, the days when the dead rose and preachers spent weeks in the jungle, fasting and praying. Today’s pastorate binge on food and collect everything their followers have to offer, including their bodies and souls. Richly moneyed and side-chicked/side-guyed, vastly travelled and slick-talking, they are merchants of exploitation; wolves who spare no flesh or bone, sucking out every juice.

An intricate cord links religion, music and politics and it is to this point that I now turn. But first, let’s recall an incident that happened some three decades ago. You see, my mum doesn’t go to church, except maybe once in seven years, and usually on New Year Day. But it just so happened on this particular day that a friend succeeded in persuading her to attend a white garment church close by. Well, she had a tale to tell my siblings and I when she returned home. Asked to contribute a song, she had got the entire church rocking with this song: “Eli shakankabuya o, eli shakankabuya, emi o, emi orun.” According to her, the drummers nearly burst their drums and the brethren jumped and clapped wildly as they sang Elishakankabuya. We all laughed, but it then occurred to me to ask what Elishakankabuya meant. My mother said with a shrug: “I don’t know now!” Apparently, the church members assumed that she was a member of a sister church and that Elishakankabuya was some sort of spiritual code!!!

Now, the realm of music. Years ago Abbas Akande, the asakasa exponent sang: “Sokoto papa, adonpaye.” Akande’s predecessors had sung about decency but he understood that the times had changed, and that was the brain behind his big break. These days, there is a ready formula for aspiring musicians willing to blow, that is, to become rich and successful: package nonsense with a great beat. The young man currently ruling the airwaves is exploiting this principle to maximum effect. Pray, what the heck is zazu zeh? The crook has even introduced the “z” alveolar fricative previously unheard of in the Yoruba language, hence “O ti ze o” (It has ze), probably meaning that something remarkable has happened. The Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) exponent, MAK Halliday, dubbed such uses of language an “anti-language.” Halliday may have been too elitist for his own good, because today’s youth, to borrow from Wole Soyinka’s quip on Nigerian English, are intent on “fragmenting and reassembling” English or any other language without apology.

In the days when music was still music, Afrobeat king, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, sang: “Botha na friend to Thatcher and Reagan/Botha na friend to some other leaders too/And together dem wan dash us human rights.” In drama, costume, stage presence, harmony and symphony, the abami eda was unmatched. In Beast of No Nation, he denounced repression in post-colonial Africa, tearing the South African apartheid regime of P.W. Botha, Britain’s Margaret Thatcher and America’s Ronald Reagan to shreds. According to him, no one should talk about gifting Africans human rights because those rights were the inalienable rights of every individual. On another occasion, he dismissed Buhari’s demarketing of Nigerians in the 80s: “my people are useless,” saying he had never heard such gobbledygook before. He dubbed it: “Babanla nonsense” (grandfather of nonsense/absolutely rubbish). But what do we have today in Nigerian music? Zazu zeh. Garbage is what makes the present generation high, their Elishakankabuya in another form.

The days of a Kendrick Lamar Duckworth addressing struggle and spiritual awakening and winning the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Music are gone. There’s no time for a Bob Dylan winning the 2016 the Nobel Prize for Literature “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”, like the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore did 1913.

Finally, we turn to politics. Decades ago, the UPN sought public office promising free education for all, free medical treatment, full employment, integrated rural development, a progressive programme for the development of roads and schools, and constitutional amendments for state creation. Conversely, President Muhammadu Buhari and his APC rode into office of promises bordering on magical realism, including making the naira the equivalent of the dollar. They recently unveiled a mysterious one million-bag pyramid of rice that has no effect on the market prize of rice. Like the G.Os and the musicians, they know the recipe for fame and wealth: package nonsense with a great beat.