In 2008, I watched America's first black Secretary of State, Collin Powel, swaying to the hypnotic tunes of Yahoozee, a song rendered by Olu Maintain, at one of those star-studded, swanky ThisDay parties. It was meant to be an after party, I suppose, for one of ThisDay's talk shows, which usually feature erstwhile world leaders who now far from the levers of power stump to mouth ideas they did not come close to peddling when they were calling the shots on the global scene.
But Mr Powell, renowned and acclaimed as an eminent American Statesman, a presidential material in his own right, unfortunately found himself bowled over by Olu Maintain's vanity larded song so much so that he threw away caution to the wind. It was an amusing sight as the varied import of Powel's little peccadillo was not lost on the discerning. “Wasn't this the same Powel who had tarred Nigerians with a sweeping brush as a 'nation of scammers'?” not a few had asked.
Powel like millions of Nigerian youths seems apparently to have been bitten by the Yahoozee bug. As a scammer’s anthem, it was soon to be displaced off the Nigerian pop chart by another cyber crime-glorifying chorus maga don pay. These artists made mega bucks from their records, (discounting the ubiquitous Alaba pirates) and smiled to the bank (in spite of the hollow lyrics of their music). What is obvious is that there is a pervasive popular taste for form rather than substance. Little premium is now being paid to content as long as it appeals to the ear and makes good aesthetic viewing.
I am quick to add that while this is not a scourge ravaging only Nigeria but one that has collectively plagued young people the world over. The way Soulja (an American hip hop artist) could fill the airwaves with his misogynistic thrash and make piles of cash while rocketing up musical charts is the same way our own Kelly handsome will shout Halleluyah because Nigerians are losing their heads to his Maga don Pay.
Arts while reflecting reality, simultaneously reinforces it. It is, therefore, for nothing that we all become incrementally numb or indifferent at the most to the evils of cyber crime after listening to a rack of albums that subtly or overtly endorses internet scams. What more, Nigerian popular songs are wont to glamorize the good life as typified by the flashiest cars, posh apartments, well-endowed girls while not forgetting the well-worn shayo, itself the muse for a myriad of songs.
Thanks to our greedy compatriots who want to live the good life espoused in pop songs, we have been called all sorts of names. Before our latest addition to the list of terrorists exporting nations, our green passport triggered the red flag in foreign climes. While we have moved few rungs down the fraud pecking order, we are far from being spick and span. Enforcement of existing laws on financial crimes has resulted in miserly convictions relative to the ongoing damage done to unsuspecting maga, to use the scammers' lingo.
Like a corporate social responsibility of sort, Microsoft is funding a campaign against cyber crime in Nigeria. Among other means, it is using the avenue of music to deplore cyber fraud. It has packed a number of our local celebrity musicians to spearhead the campaign and there is a track and a video to boot to impress the message on the hearts of young people. All thanks to Microsoft we now have a riposte to the body of works that sutbtly pitches the gains of internet fraud. In the minds of the producers, the song Maga no need pay is the much needed answer or first step in curbing the yahoo yahoo scourge. The Microsoft sponsored campaign to tackle cyber crime with music though a welcome development raises several questions on the effectiveness of fighting a scourge with its vector. Granted, immunization has employed the same logic to fight many an epidemic. The extent to which popular music, which has inadvertently and overtly glamorized and endorsed cyber crimes, will reduce the propensity of the denizens of Yahoozeville to fleece foreigners of their hard-earned money remains in the laps of the gods. The success of such approach is left in doubt by the knowledge that the currency of a song is subject to the capricious taste of music lovers and radio DJs who almost always decide the shelf life of a song.
While star-studded collaboration of the kind that we see in the MISSPIN sponsored Maga no need pay fits the storied Hollywood model of lending celebrity to worthy causes, the model is being replicated in the current battle against cyber crime, shoddily though. In the American model which we are so quick to ape, these celelanthropic efforts are just means to the ends of notching up the profiles of the celebrities involved. Their loyalty to the causes they purportedly support is almost always as fickle as their divorce-prone marriages. It is laughable when Tuface Idibia throws his weight behind the clichéd ABC campaign against the spread of HIV/AIDS while siring babies by different mothers, of course outside wedlock. It is the same warped logic when we ask artists to wax records to deploy cyber crime when for the most part some of owe their claim to fame to glamorizing the life on the fast lane that cyber scammers aspire to. It has even been mooted that a substantial amount of the money that new artists use to start up their careers can be traced to yahooville.
Internet scam is a dent on our image. That is a moot point. We need to seek more credible avenues to address cyber scamming. As a lover of good music, I am of the view that the bland, hollow pop music that is churned out today will do so little in reversing an odious trend it has inadvertently helped to deepen. The listeners are not fooled. Like Colin Powell atop the Africa rising concert stage they could not care less about the lyrics even if it is a no brainer. The song can be as hollow as Yahoozee but if it is more “danceable” than Maga no need Pay they can twist to the lousy beats and wish for their own hummers when their hapless preys finally pay.
Shout Halleluyah!
