You see any time I come across promotional material for Nigeria, all I see is natural landscapes (God's creation that we had nothing to do with), people from different ethnic groups within the country dancing and probably our footballers celebrating a tournament win, to make matters worse they sometimes contain excerpts from videos from the 70s showing cocoa production in the Southwest and the groundnut pyramids of kano- where are they now? I get disgusted and wonder; are these what we are all about? Can we not be like other countries that flaunt their highly educated and efficient workforce, new, shinny and vibrant cities that are well maintained and industries producing advanced goods showing a robust economy, in addition to natural landscapes and whatever cultural or sporting icons they may have? What exactly is our problem?
The way they make dances so prominent in the TV adverts in particular just makes me sick- it is like we are saying Hey everybody! we are Nigerians and the only thing we are good at is dancing like a group of mindless people.
Some might argue that such things are used to portray Nigeria because we have little-else to present to the world. If that is so, let us wake-up and start doing whatever it takes to stop presenting dances as our major contribution to the world and remaining foolishly happy when people from the western world tell us that we have a "rich culture."
No comments:
Post a Comment