Between Yahoozee and Ms Winfrey

Oprah has made a handsome living from the power she has to use her couch to make or break issues . She does this for most part with a Lite touch to the acclaim of a lot of women across the world. She is greatly admired and incredibly powerful or so most surveys from the USA suggest. At the same time she rarely ever takes on anything without dumbing it down to a level that makes it only consumable as emotional fast food, emotive, hysterical and completely self serving. From Hip Hop to Racism she finds a point of under- intellectual departure from which her show is launched. My dislike now confirmed she picks on a very touchy subject so called Nigerian Internet Scam. Never mind that the follow up on her website suggests there are 13 million Nigerians, it seems if you are going to stereotype 140 million people you need not even bother with the facts to much.

Yes it is true that Nigerians are involved an awful lot in scams on the internet and the name is now Yahoo, Yahoo boys not 419, Oprah ( even the street issues are wrong). The numbers involved are less than 200,000 individuals as a percentage of 140 million this is less than 1%. Like her favorite Africans in the Mzansi she ignores that there are at least 2 Nigerians on the list of top 10 surgeons in America, that the largest most profitable African American Business of Black Enterprise top 100 is Nigerian owned, the country has produced at least 4 of the 10 most celebrated African writers and even more inventors and scientists. She champions Patricia who admitted she wanted to double her money and illegally help to transfer funds out of Nigeria. Her greed and disdain for the laws of other countries lost her the savings of her life. It reminds me of when I was scammed by a group of Irish lads in a white van my desire to buy a cheap TV and video set with high spec drowned out my normally eloquent intuition and I was taken for £120 pounds. The shame and pain still abides with me till date. If it seems too good to be true it is. There are no innocents in these crimes.

This does not absolve those who participate in this reputation destroying acts. Those of us who were fortunate to travel regularly in the 1970s remember a time when a Nigerian passport earned you respect, deference and even dignity. In the same UK where we are now met with sniffer dogs we were celebrated for our oil wealth as well as enterprise. We were widely known for our desire for education and upward mobility. The turning point was the Buhari/Idiagbon regime starting 31st December 1983. They could never have foreseen that their effort to restrict foreign exchange by cutting remittances to Nigerian students abroad would lead to a broad range of desperate actions including participation in Credit Card fraud. Once some of the brightest and best crossed over into crime the deterrence of shame and the taboo of risking family reputation had been broken so far it has not been restored. There is no excuse but there are always reasons . In a nation with a some of the highest ratio of young men in the world a culture of getting rich quick has used this approach to devastating effect on the reputation of the great country of Nigeria. In a society where conspicuous consumption is celebrated as well as rewarded and productivity ignored there is certainly a breeding ground for this behavior.

Oprah and as the recent Pew research on global attitudes show South Africans in large number paint this stereotype as a Nigerian rather than an human condition. They should know better. There is more per capita crime especially violent robbery leading to murder in Mzansi than Gidi. As Oprah's own life story shows and the treatment of African Americans in USA confirms there should be more caution exercised. Then there are the Nigerians quite a few who describe us by the worst amongst us and now put the celebration of this misguided young men to son. Most popular amongst this is the track Yahoozee. I like the music especially the use of Apala inflection in the chorus but I once again meet my 50 cent/Hip Hop is dead moment. If I buy this music am i glorifying what it celebrates or is it just a work of Art? Is the Godfather a glorification of the Mafia or a classic work of Cinema? Or both?

I know and teach enough about the power of stereotypes to know that when it is well packaged the very people who carry the yoke of being reduced and grouped in this way become the owners as well as enforcer of the label. We can see that in stereotypes such as 'Blond Bimbo' or 'Black super Stud'. It is the power of half truths to be used as the only truth. If only for that reason simplification, stereotypes and reduction the kind Oprah had on her show and the people who made Yahoozee track sell to the public must not be left to stand without challenge. Hopefully the fullness of our character as a nation both good and bad can be explored, understood and finally celebrated as it is for other great experiment in Nationhood. The enterprising and productive millions of Nigerians deserve no less.