Of Southern Celebrities and Northern Appendages

Flips of Commonsense

Lagos Blogs and self-styled celebrities need a reality check in their claims to being famous, influential and, sometimes, even wealthy in our socio-political space and interactions. They are rockstars of sensationalism whose achievements in nothing have been reported persistently by loyal bloggers, they were tricked into believing the praises they paid for
You see blogposts with mischievous or misleading headlines like “Toolz & Captain Something’s Wedding Shut Down Nigeria” or “Sauce Kid’s New Song Gets Nigeria Talking”, and in spite of your conversance with the media, you’ve no idea who those are without a search on Google.

These are the everyday delusions Lagos Blogs publish in their imagination of Nigeria as a stretch that extends from Lagos Island to Ibadan, and then from Lagos Mainland to southern cities like Port Harcourt. The cartographic idea of what Nigeria is often includes the federal capital which is to them the north, the whole of the north!
You have a wedding that only frustrated traffic in a perpetually slow city audaciously described as “wedding of the decade” or “the most expensive” where, the same week in Zaria, Indimi’s son paid N12 million as just dowry in seeking the hands of the Emir of Zaria’s daughter in marriage.

If some overhyped congregation of people who can’t even boast of N5 million savings is referred to as that of the “movers and shakers of Nigeria”, what would be said of, say, Mohammed Babangida’s wedding that literally shut down Minna, attracting billionaire newsmakers from across the world. Yes, not just from Minna or Nigeria, the WORLD!
The examples of small weddings that are only flamboyant on Instagram are simply to give you an idea of the south’s propagation of “nothing” as the “everything” of the nation, from politics to private enterprises, and music to ordinary citizenship.

For instance, if you mention Ali Nuhu and Ramsey Noah as of equal celebrity status, gullible consumers of these manipulative Lagos Blogs may perceive that as vulgar. But Ali Nuhu has bigger fan base. Because I’ve never seen anyone decked in a T-shirt bearing Noah’s face, but Nuhu’s is even used as sticker on cars, tricycles and shops – and “local” artists even have songs in his honour.
It’s easy to claim that no song by a Nigerian artist has ever gone viral as fast as Buhari’s campaign song in Hausa by Rarara. But the north isn’t in control of an influential blog to calibrate and publicise such achievements. I recently checked Hausa Lyrics Dot Com and was shocked that the domain was neither registered nor acquired. I bought it. It shocked me.

There are no domains for lyrics of Hausa songs despite the big market at our reach. Yes, we are an apology for innovation!
This media imbalance in portrayals of Nigeria is our fault. The north is a purgatory of the most viable ideas, where seeming obtainable venture capitals staring you in the face will be denied without even an apology. This is to preserve the region’s classism.
You approach a Lamborghini-collecting northern elite for a venture capital or partnership to develop a startup with potentials to make a strong impact and marked difference and of course sustainable incomes, and you get an appointment.

You arrive for the appointment, you are told Alhaji is busy and won’t see you today. You get another appointment; you are told to return another week. You endure and return as arranged, and then you hear the very Alhaji, whose shoe-rack is worth more than what you require to launch the startup, asking you to give up and face other things. Like the civil service he will never allow his kids to join.
A friend of mine got N20 million from a southern elite to launch a startup that’s now gone international and even featured on Forbes. No northern elite will invest that amount of money on the son of nobody, in their naive preservation of the old order of “Maikudi da Talaka” – the have and the have-not.

Isn’t it a shame that, despite its brains and talents and demographic privilege, no northerner owns a vibrant blog or online media platform to match Sahara Reporters, Premium Times, Bella Naija and The Cable?
Some of us have tried and are still trying to float viable startups. But even though you’ve the contacts of three former Presidents and countless oil tycoons and political entrepreneurs of northern origin, none sees the wisdom of establishing a platform for portraying the realities of a misunderstood people from this side of the country