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18 — Vanguard, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 24, 2021<br />
IT has gone down history that<br />
Nigeria’s popular musician, Damini<br />
Ebunoluwa Ogulu, best known as<br />
Burna Boy, became the first Nigerian<br />
to win the Grammy, the world’s<br />
biggest music award though some<br />
Nigerians had earlier been mentioned<br />
in connection with minor Grammy<br />
achievements.<br />
endeavours.<br />
He was crowned under the World Burna Boy’s victory is one of the<br />
Music Album category for his high points in the build-up of our<br />
album, Twice as Tall, at the 63rd rhythmic renaissance; a turning point<br />
edition of the prestigious music event in Nigeria popular music which began<br />
held virtually in Los Angeles on in 2009 when two Nigerian Afro-pop<br />
March 14, 2021. It was the second year artistes, Obumneme Ali and<br />
in a row Burna Boy was nominated in Nwachukwu Ozioko known as<br />
that category.<br />
Bracket, in their Yori Yori, brought the<br />
He beat other nominees like ‘owewelele’ or what the Yoruba call<br />
Antibalas, Bebel Gilberto, Anoushka ‘konkolo’ rhythm, into Hip-hop.<br />
Shankar and Tianariwen. Last year he Apart from the brief era of the early<br />
was beaten by the veteran Beninois Nigerian high-life musicians and the<br />
singer, Angelique Kidjo. Burna dominance of Fela Kuti, Sonny<br />
Boy’s Grammy award is significant in Okosun and their ilk, the Nigerian<br />
one respect.<br />
music arena had been dominated by<br />
It is another proof of the excellence Western popular music both on radio<br />
that Nigerians can attain in all human and in social life – a state of affairs<br />
Burna Boy: We can be twice as tall<br />
that music communication scholars<br />
described as “cultural imperialism”.<br />
Even in recent years, the Nigerian<br />
airwaves and social events had been<br />
dominated musically by foreign<br />
artistes like 50-Cent, R-Kelly,<br />
Notorious BIG, etc. Nigerian popular<br />
musicians simply lost out to their<br />
Western counterparts because they<br />
played Western rhythms, competing<br />
outside their own cultural milieu.<br />
Things, however, began to turn<br />
around for Nigerian popular music<br />
when the Nigerian high-life music,<br />
constructed in the 1960s, was<br />
deconstructed, reconstructed and<br />
imported into the new sound we know<br />
today as Nigerian popular music,<br />
confirming the writings of Benson<br />
Idonije (Burna Boy’s grandfather)<br />
that “modern pop music in Nigeria is<br />
derived from high-life.”<br />
Three major forerunners of that<br />
reconstruction processes were Sunny<br />
Nneji with his song, Mr. Fantastic,<br />
released in 1998; Tu Face Idibia’s<br />
African Queen (2004) and Bracket’s<br />
Yori Yori (2009). From there, the<br />
buildup continued, manifesting in the<br />
works of P-Square, D’banj, Flavour,<br />
Phyno, Timaya, Davido, Olamide,<br />
Wizkid, onto Burna Boy.<br />
The lesson here can be drawn from<br />
Mahatma Ghandi’s words, quoted in<br />
UNDP Human Development Report,<br />
1999: “I do not want my house to be<br />
walled on all sides and my windows<br />
stuffed. I want the cultures of all the<br />
lands to be blown about my house as<br />
freely as possible. But I refuse to be<br />
blown off my feet by any.”<br />
We congratulate Burna Boy and<br />
Wizkid.<br />
Who is sabotaging Nigeria?<br />
By SUNNY IKHIOYA<br />
YOU claimed during the 2015 election<br />
campaign that you do not understand<br />
why we are talking about fuel subsidy;<br />
today you have been in government for<br />
over six years and subsidy cost has<br />
escalated under your regime. Who is<br />
sabotaging Nigeria?<br />
We are an oil producing nation and<br />
attend meetings regularly and even got<br />
allocated executive seats at the OPEC<br />
sessions; yet we import all of our<br />
petroleum products from abroad. Who is<br />
sabotaging who?<br />
We are an oil producing nation with four<br />
standard refineries, three in the South and<br />
one in the North, all of them not working<br />
presently and millions of dollars spent<br />
annually on their maintenance. Who is<br />
sabotaging Nigeria? The technology of<br />
refining crude oil into petrol and diesel is<br />
no longer rocket science.<br />
The locals in the Niger Delta have<br />
mastered the art of cooking oil to produce<br />
petrol, kerosene and diesel. But instead of<br />
streamlining these local productions and<br />
bringing them up to acceptable standards,<br />
we are busy sending military personnel to<br />
destroy the production centres and wasting<br />
whatever they have produced. Who is<br />
sabotaging Nigeria?<br />
You send troops into the creeks of the<br />
Niger Delta to ensure that local<br />
production is stopped or totally<br />
eliminated. These men see the viability of<br />
this project and decide to have a cut in the<br />
deal. They collect their cut and the locally<br />
produced petrol and diesel are allowed<br />
into the mainstream. Who is sabotaging<br />
who? You know that the importation of<br />
petroleum products into the country is<br />
depleting our foreign exchange earnings<br />
and you are stopping local productions of<br />
same products. Now prices of almost<br />
everything have escalated because of<br />
wrong policy implementations. Who is<br />
sabotaging who?<br />
State governors are given huge<br />
allocations as security vote; meanwhile,<br />
the entire country is sinking under the<br />
weight of criminal activities. Who is<br />
sabotaging Nigeria? Everyday die-hard<br />
fundamentalists and insurgents, run riot<br />
maiming, killing, kidnapping Nigerians<br />
and destroying their properties. But<br />
instead dealing decisively with them when<br />
arrested, they are granted amnesty under<br />
the guise of reforming them. In other<br />
words, you end up compensating the<br />
It is imperative for us to look<br />
deeply into the mirror and see<br />
facing us the main cause of our<br />
problems; to be honest, the<br />
fault is ours<br />
criminals and abandon the victims. Who<br />
is sabotaging Nigeria?<br />
We all claim that we are in a secular<br />
nation, where everyone is free to practise<br />
his religion in any part of the country. Now<br />
you go to people's shops to destroy goods<br />
and properties on the excuse that your<br />
religion does not permit such. Meanwhile,<br />
you are collecting large chunks of money<br />
as taxes derived from the goods you are<br />
destroying. Who is sabotaging Nigeria?<br />
We claim that Nigeria is a multi-ethnic<br />
nation, on which account every section of<br />
the country must have representations in<br />
federal appointments.<br />
You have deliberately miscued this<br />
policy that is meant to unite this country<br />
by ensuring that only only people of<br />
certain ethnicity and religion are placed<br />
OPINION<br />
at the echelon of strategic positions at<br />
Federal Government institutions. Who is<br />
sabotaging Nigeria? All over the world,<br />
people are looking beyond petroleum<br />
products-driven engines. In fact, other<br />
countries are now using solar and wind to<br />
generate electricity and power their motor<br />
engines.<br />
But we spend a huge chunk of our hard<br />
earned money digging to find oil in the<br />
desert part of the country, something<br />
previous administrations tried without<br />
success. Meantime, our refineries are lying<br />
idle. Who is sabotaging Nigeria?<br />
Almost all of our major federal roads<br />
are in very bad shape, especially in the<br />
Southern part of the country; they are in<br />
this state because of depleting funds and<br />
you chose to, at this period, to build a<br />
railway line from Nigeria to Niger<br />
Republic, when such a project is crying<br />
for implementation in the commercially<br />
viable part of the country. Who is<br />
sabotaging Nigeria?<br />
Agreed that we are in a secular state, a<br />
country badly in need of scarce foreign<br />
exchange; meanwhile, you dole out<br />
millions in foreign currencies to<br />
encourage religious pilgrimages abroad,<br />
money that can be used in addressing<br />
critical infrastructure needs of the<br />
country.<br />
You forget also that there are certain<br />
percentage of your population that do not<br />
benefit from this religious largesse. You<br />
are in charge of government and certain<br />
officials have been found incompetent in<br />
the performance of their duties, instead of<br />
relieving them of their duties, you granted<br />
them extended stay in office and when you<br />
finally removed them, you recommended<br />
them for higher diplomatic assignments.<br />
Who is sabotaging Nigeria?<br />
That is the question we must all ask<br />
ourselves. The solutions are not far fetched,<br />
it is imperative for us to look deeply into<br />
the mirror and see facing us the main<br />
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cause of our problems; to be honest, the<br />
fault is ours. We have to take management<br />
to another level, especially as it affects<br />
public service. This country is suffering<br />
from maladministration in all of its<br />
ramifications and the resultant<br />
consequence is a drifting nation.<br />
Suddenly, from every corner, groups are<br />
springing up, asking to be released from<br />
this union that is not working. It is very<br />
important that government officials take<br />
very positive action to halt this drift. The<br />
answer is not in bullying or suppression<br />
of dissenting voices; the answer is in sitting<br />
down with everyone and talking it over to<br />
find a way forward.<br />
There is no other way; an idea whose<br />
time has come can never be stymied;<br />
power is ephemeral; Generals have come<br />
and gone; suppressing dissenting voices<br />
did not start today and is still continuing;<br />
but, ultimately, it is the people who will<br />
come out victorious. The situation in the<br />
country today is not a matter for<br />
grandstanding by those in power. Those<br />
sabotaging this country are the people<br />
ruling us and their business accomplices.<br />
Let no body say that this country is poor;<br />
this country has potentials to be great, it<br />
can be seen by all. You calculate wealth<br />
potentials through tangible and intangible<br />
assets; the intangible assets in Nigeria are<br />
in our resources and potentials that are<br />
yet to be tapped. Let us review our<br />
management of these assets and begin to<br />
do the right things.<br />
The insurgency and banditry we are<br />
facing presently is also as a result of the<br />
mismanagement of our resources;<br />
people's minds have been reprogrammed<br />
to finding ways of making easy money;<br />
people who were once gentle, loving,<br />
passive with neighbours and strangers<br />
have been transformed into dangerous<br />
criminals. We are our own problem.<br />
•Ikhioya wrote via www.southsouthecho.com