NigeriansTalk

About Nige­ria with a pinch of salt

When doc­u­men­taries are adver­tised about some aspect of Niger­ian life one now tends to take every­thing with a pinch of salt.

If any­thing, the titles count for noth­ing, the expec­ta­tions the titles invite are usu­ally never any­where near the real­ity of what gets shown – in the end, one has to stretch ones imag­i­na­tion to match the inten­tions with the pur­pose; objec­tive scrutiny usu­ally ends up as a parody.

This was the feel­ing that greeted the show­ing by BBC Four of Sto­ryville: The New Kings of Nige­ria [1], which was appar­ently about the brain gain of Niger­ian returnees from the West with the abil­ity to make a dif­fer­ence back home.

Media gen­er­a­tion not royalty

At the begin­ning of the pro­gramme, it became clear from the nar­ra­tor that this was really about “the chang­ing face of Nigeria’s media generation.”

The pro­tag­o­nist was Wal­ter, a great grand­son of King Jaja of Opobo [2], a slave in the 19^th Cen­tury who became king of his peo­ple in Niger Delta area of Nige­ria, was cap­tured and exiled by the British, never to return alive to his land because of how pow­er­ful he had become.

One can sup­pose the idea of king came from this rela­tion­ship rather than king in any real sense of the word. Wal­ter, a public-school edu­cated man from Eng­land with a pass­able Eng­lish accent had returned to Nige­ria after what could not be termed a ster­ling career in Eng­land but with the brag­gado­cio of some for­eign exper­tise to com­mand atten­tion and meet up with oppor­tu­ni­ties more easily.

The voice of a chancer

He lived with his sis­ter in a fortress-like bar­ri­caded build­ing and offered all sorts of plat­i­tudes about the hus­tle of life and liveli­hood in Nige­ria, in many ways meet­ing up with the sharp ends of skull­dug­gery and peo­ple try­ing to take advan­tage of so-called newcomers.

He landed his first job as the voice of “Big Brother Nige­ria” and then moved into pro­duc­ing and direct­ing real­ity shows and music videos – at every point, he appeared to pull it off but he never really had the grav­i­tas of being king of his entire in terms of what he did, even though he had lots of words to describe any sit­u­a­tion he found him­self in.

What this doc­u­men­tary revealed was not so much the resource­ful­ness and acu­men that belied the Wel­come to Lagos doc­u­men­taries but a way of life of the priv­i­leged who took things for granted and were ready to mete pun­ish­ment or ret­ri­bu­tion out to those who dared chal­lenge the sta­tus quo.

No mass oppor­tu­nity in real­ity shows

There was no royal aspect to this show, no peo­ple being lead or vision being con­veyed, rather, cut-outs to The Appren­tice Nige­ria, Koko Man­sion, the pop­u­lar musi­cian D’Banj and a foot­ball tal­ent hunt brought the prospect of great oppor­tu­nity to the few rather than the many – all these real­ity shows just plucked indi­vid­u­als from obscu­rity into star­dom and the cachet that it meant in Nigeria.

At the end of the hour, this was a sim­ple favour to Wal­ter, resumé fod­der accom­pa­nied with ref­er­ences from dif­fer­ent peo­ple who in one way were bur­nish­ing Walter’s ances­tral claim with a con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous incli­na­tion of expect­ing Wal­ter to become the “King Jaja” of the 21^st Cen­tury; he did not present any such innate ability.

In fact, the class­room ref­er­ences to the story of King Jaja of Opobo was a dis­trac­tion from the goal of Wal­ter being able to say he appeared on the BBC and you can only won­der how many doors that might open in Nige­ria, West Africa and Africa at large.

Pub­lic school favours

No, I was not impressed at all, this is not one would expect of kings or of peo­ple who really have been suc­cess­ful in the West and have returned to Nige­ria to make a dif­fer­ence. If any watcher were per­suaded of the oppor­tu­ni­ties to boss around peo­ple as one would not be able to do in the West, it is not entirely that easy and humble-pie is com­ing fast to your face.

Wal­ter has Eliz­a­beth Stop­ford the direc­tor of this show to thank for this chi­canery mas­querad­ing as enlight­en­ment, but never say a pub­lic school edu­ca­tion does not give you undue access to oppor­tu­ni­ties hard to get by merit.

For a title, it would have been bet­ter adver­tised as “Wal­ter needs a job” and wants VIP access to the big par­ties and social cir­cles in Nige­ria — ambi­tion which does not depict the reserve and com­port­ment of pub­lic school prog­eny, he needs to hear the clink of many kobos before he can cling to being any kind of king .

This was not about Nige­ria, it was about an indi­vid­ual many of us in Dias­pora would be quite loath to imi­tate in an fash­ion, view or mindset.

As usual Nige­ria Curios­ity has obtained access to the YouTube ver­sion of the show [3], watch and well, make up your mind about it. Thank you Solomon Sydelle.

Sources

[1] BBC — BBC Four Pro­grammes — Sto­ryville, 2009–2010, The New Kings of Nigeria

[2] King Jaja of Opobo

[3] Watch BBC’s ‘New Kings Of Nige­ria’ (Video) ~ Niger­ian Curiosity

Other reviews

How I laughed whilst googling my great great grand­fa­ther – King Jaja : Black Looks

nai­jablog: The New Kings of Nigeria

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• Last Night’s TV — Sto­ryville: New Kings of Nige­ria, BBC4; The Big Per­son­al­ity Test: a Child of Our Time Spe­cial, BBC1 (independent.co.uk)