By
Tolu Ogunlesi
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Kim
Kardashian on arrival at the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos
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The
title for this article is inspired, obviously, by Dele Momodu’s ‘The Karenplification
of Africa’, written after Karen Igho won the 2011 Big Brother Amplified Show.
The
piece itself is about Kim Kardashian, the American Reality TV star, whose
primary claim to fame is her appearance in a sex video that leaked in 2007. She
has since parlayed that fame, or shall we call it notoriety, into a series of
gripping Reality TV shows, and a high-profile relationship with Mr. Kanye West.
And a couple of millions of dollars in earnings, and 17 million followers on
Twitter.
She
was in Lagos two weekends ago, for Dare Art Alade’s Love Like A Movie
concert. Somehow, following the show, a controversy arose on the Internet —
sustained largely by people who did not attend the concert, and were just
depending on Twitter updates for their information. They seemed to be gloating
— somehow the gist going around was that guests had paid N100,000 ($630) only
to get a 45 second glimpse of Ms. Kardarshian.
British-Nigerian
blogger Jeremy Weate, fed this view of events with a widely-circulated piece
that insinuated that Kim-K — Weate reported was paid $500,000; even though
there’s no evidence for this — had ’419ed’ Nigerians.
And
then the British journalist, Marina Hyde, picked up on that ’419′ theme
(leading to Weate accusing her of plagiarising him), in her column for the London
Guardian.
Weate
and Hyde apparently have no idea that before the concert, there was a
dinner-and-photo-session with the V-VIPs, the holders of the N100,000 tickets.
This went on for at least an hour and a half — the V-VIPs evidently got a lot
more than the widely-reported 45 seconds of Kim-K’s time.
But
that’s by the way. I found it intensely amusing to see two oyibo people
fighting roforofo on the Internet over what is essentially a Nigerian
creation: 419. I’m not sure why these people appeared to be crying more than
the supposedly bereaved.
It doesn’t seem to have dawned on them that the sort
of Nigerians who can afford to shell out N100,000 for a concert are not the
sort to feel they’ve been “scammed” of such amount of money. Nigerians don’t
operate that way. It is these same Nigerians who effortlessly pay N1m for a VIP
table at concerts involving local artistes.
They’re the same ones who walk into
a showroom in Victoria Island to pay N34m for a car that will be ridden on
gully-ridden roads. (Last week, I actually saw such a car at a showroom in
Lagos. NN34m! If there were no buyers, there’d be no sellers).
For
me, however, the real story in all of this is what it tells us about the
Nigeria we live in.
For
purposes of full disclosure, I attended the concert. In fact, I attended as a
VVIP, even though I clearly do not belong to that category of Nigerians. There
was enough good luck on my head to qualify me for a free VVIP ticket.
(There’s
no way I could’ve afforded paying even a quarter of that price for a concert ticket.
The most I’ve paid for a concert ticket in my life was £36 (N9,000), for a
showing of We Will Rock You at London’s West End, in September 2011).
Point
One about Nigeria. The hypocrisy. I saw a newspaper report that said Nigerian
families were disturbed by the presence of a “morally questionable influence”
like Kim Kardashian, associated with a leaked sex-tape. I found that laughable,
on account of the blatant hypocrisy.
This is the same Nigeria where parents
shelled out thousands of naira last December for their kids to attend Chris
Brown’s Lagos concert. The same woman-battering Chris Brown. At that event,
Brown lit up a roll of marijuana, and smoked it briefly, in front of all those
children. Days after the event, I overheard a conversation involving one ‘Big
Man’, who took his teenage children to the show.
I heard him lamenting how
disappointed he was that the singer would smoke weed in front of all those
children. I found that hilarious: you pay up to $300 to see Chris Brown and
then complain about his behaviour – didn’t you know what he was capable of
doing before venturing?
Point
Two about Nigeria: The startling juxtaposition of mind-boggling wealth and
poverty. To Weate’s credit, he highlighted this when he said: “The Lagos elite
blows money at puffery, while most of Nigeria suffers.”
This country is cursed
with an elite for whom no amount is too much to spend frivolously, whilst 70
per cent of the population languishes in crushing poverty. Every now and then,
I suspect we’re doomed as a nation.
I
instinctively resist any attempt to cast Kim-K (as much as I don’t care much
about her) as a villain in this case. With or without Kim-K, Nigerians will
always be what they are — given to shocking displays of irresponsible spending.
Money-miss-road-ness.
Any attempt to suggest, even as a joke, that Kim-K
conned Nigerians totally misses the point. Being conned implies a passive
gullibility that no one can find the Nigerian elite guilty of.
Our VVIPs are
never the hapless victims of devious international stars; they always know what
they’re doing with their money, and possess the resources to fund every obscene
choice down to the last kobo.
A
source I consider reliable (an African-American who told me there was no way in
this world he would pay $600 for any concert in America) informed me that a
Nigerian paid Rick Ross $150,000 to perform at a 10-year-old’s birthday party,
during his visit to Nigeria last September. That might explain why Ross tweeted
this, while in the country: “Nigeria is rich with oil. Generational wealth. I
need some.”
We
know that in today’s Nigeria, there’s often very little connection between
wealth and legitimate work: the big lesson of the fuel subsidy scam is that the
country is full of ‘contractors’ and briefcase-businessmen, who have made a
science out of corruptly converting ‘connections’ into cash.
For this class of
people, therefore, nothing is too frivolous to spend on; no amount too much to
be spent. (Please note that I’m not saying everyone who pays N100,000 for a
concert ticket belongs to this corrupt class).
We
have fundamental problems in this country; our oil wealth, free-for-all, has,
in our accountability-free environment, rewired our minds, such that it is
impossible for us to see anything wrong with our attitude of ostentation amidst
so much dysfunction.
Meanwhile,
the pregnant Kim-K has since returned to America. She seems to have had a lot
of fun in Nigeria (just like Rick Ross), tweeting as she left: “Thank you for
the amazing time, Nigeria! I can’t wait to come back soon!”
And
she will, trust me. She will.
•Ogunlesi,
a journalist and blogger, wrote in from Lagos via to4ogunlesi@yahoo.com
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