Nigerians absolutely like to copy… That’s one thing we stand out in and indeed, are miles ahead of other countries in. Once we see someone else do something and it appears to have a lot of potential, especially financially, we’ll move the highest mountains and swim the deepest oceans to replicate that idea and grab our own share of the cake before it finishes completely!
This is especially true with churches and their ‘founders’. A disgruntled, financially-challenged individual takes a good, long look at a big church like Redeemed Christian Church of God and mentally calculates the amount of money the church rakes in from tithes, midweek and Sunday services and imagines he can make a fraction of that staggering amount every week so he goes and starts off his ‘own’ church in his small sitting room, or any available space he can find. He’ll probably force his reluctant wife and kids to be the first members of the congregation and will fervently co-opt his neighbours into joining his ‘church’. He’ll more than likely adopt the ambiguous ‘title’ of ‘bishop’ or ‘reverend’ or ‘prophet’ and strive to ‘perform’ or more commonly, fake ‘miracles’ as this is the fastest and surest way to grow a church congregation in Nigeria, especially given the millions of people who are desperately poor and disillusioned and need some sign of connection with a supernatural being as this connection offers them a sliver of hope that their conditions will improve someday.
I was watching TV the other day (a very rare occurrence) and I was unfortunate to view one dumbass ‘reality’ show. Luckily for me and unluckily for you, I can’t remember the name of the show. I think it was supposed to produce an acting ‘talent’. It was the ‘razz-est’, most uninteresting reality show I have ever watched in my entire life. The picture quality was so poor; I felt the recording was done using a Nokia 3310! In their wisdom, the organizers sited the camp in a Northern state of all places. If they had more sense than they did and absolutely had to site the camp in the north, a scenic location like the The highlight of that awful episode was when a contestant was evicted from the ‘camp’ (which looked like an uncompleted building that was surrounded by weeds). Apparently, the ‘matron’ of the camp asked her to sweep the compound one morning and as there was no broom, she had to personally procure palm fronds (for Pete’s sake!) to do the job. Minutes later, the same matron came back and yelled at her to go and take her bath as breakfast (I shudder at the thought of the composition of the meal) was about to be served. The poor girl went outside the camp to ‘fetch’ water from a well (reality show, their fathers!) and the woman saw her and gave her another tongue lashing at which she gave the woman a piece of her mind and went off to pack her stuff, totally fed-up with the whole mess!
The ‘director’ (and probably chief judge, organizer, treasurer and demi-god) of the show (he looked really unkempt and famished) ‘interrogated’ the girl before she left the camp in which he combined a pompous-sounding speech and a rant at the girl for packing her stuff and then ‘evicted’ her. She promptly got on- wait for it- an ‘okada’ and zoomed off, with another bike carrying her boxes, probably to the bus park to get transportation home. Okada? How cheap can one get? I suspect the poor girl was made to foot the bill from her own pocket!
Maybe the most annoying ‘copy-catism’ is when people speak, or try to speak ‘phonee’! It annoys me more than saharareporters.com and the National Assembly combined annoyed Obasanjo when they almost single(double)-handedly shot down his third term plot. It grates the auditory senses to hear one bush Yoruba girl or ‘konk’ igbo girl trying to speak through their noses in a vain attempt to mimic foreign (especially British and American) accents. How come it is ‘cool’ when a Nigerian hears a Frenchman or a Spaniard speak English with their native accents, and we try to copy them? Have you ever seen a white man try and speak English with a Yoruba accent? Una dey mad!
