By Shomoye Abiodun
“Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, morphine or idealism” C.G Jung
To successfully ascertain whether Nigerians embracement of new idea is addiction or delusion is quite knotty. To those who attended my type of secondary school (I am talking of the “Ajepako” type of secondary school, a learning environment made accessible to all without discrimination) you will be so familiar with lots of hilarious slangs, acts, innovations that students of my type of school finds easy to inculcate into their lifestyles. But if you were so privileged to have attended a secondary school located around the beautiful places in Nigeria cities, you might be deprived of my type of comical experience and you apparently missed out. Back then in school, it was like a challenge amongst we students (same way quest for twitter hashtag popularity is on social media) to come up with latest funny slangs (most times vulgar words). Like normal “Ajepako” secondary school students, most of us does trek to and fro.
Early in the morning, we hardly take notes of our environment, we have to beat the “late comers” time but the scenario is always different in the afternoon, even as tired as we might be, we were always attentive of our environment while trekking back to our various destinations. Our ears were always plated with magnetic substance in the afternoon just to attract any funny slang from the informal environment, in the battle of; I will be the first to drop this slang. The most hilarious one remains the demeaning and embarrassing series of responses we do unleash on hearing the exclamatory “ehn!”. If you attended my type of secondary school, am sure you know the response(s) already.
The fact that Nigerians finds it so easy to embrace new locally identified or imported (more like smuggled) technology, life style, slangs is actually a thing of joy. Taking such innovation to the extreme and eventual abuse is another disheartening dimension. Scenario painted in the paragraphs above is common to all, average Nigerian is always on the lookout for the style invoke, the picture taking posture gaining attention, which combination of make-up kits is attracting all the Instagram likes and the big masquerade itself; which device or gadget gives me the social classification I want.
The advent and eventual importation of smartphones with front side camera to Nigeria came to all as a relief, no more turning the phone around, using discretions to get the exact location of camera’s pointer was totally eliminated. In fact, we can now check out our posture before taking a clip of ourselves, what a relief you must say.
Abuse and bastardization seems to be a very good partner of Nigerians and displaying our immense cordial relationship with “abuse and bastardization” of innovations always come at a rate faster than what we can imagine.
The word selfie is no new word to average Nigerians, don’t be surprised if a 4years old girl walks up to you and request for one, we have fully assimilated it to our lifestyle and advanced the assimilation to a horrible state. Recently, a “selfie” broke into the social media space and on seeing the picture, I broke into tears, couldn’t believe what I saw, it was a young boy in a selfie posture with his dead friend who was laid down for final prayer.
Most times we question our political space and its handlers but hardly do we question our society and enquire about the evolutional changes that are going on within our environment. We actually care less about our lost pride, our culture and tradition, our children and new generation. Our lackadaisical approach has not just led to partial depletion of our cultural values, it has also left us with children who feels our cultural values are inferior to the foreign ones, and it becomes worst if some finds their way to the land of our colonial masters.
Most active and agile Nigerians who are privileged to be getting session on several media, seems to have their area of interests monopolized, hardly will you see them discuss issues related to nurturing and protecting our culture and traditions. Yes, politically terrible environment we unfortunately found ourselves is affecting our livelihood and a threat to our survival but let us remember someone will take over the space oneday, is it the guy that saw nothing wrong in taking selfie with a dead friend that will see our future challenges as serious issues?
We have grown negatively to the extent that we can’t differentiate between pictures to be snapped and the ones that should not be, when and where to and not to take selfie. An average Nigerian will prefer snapping and uploading accident victims than connecting to relevant authorities that could render lifesaving assistance. Is this an addiction or delusion? Our social media space is currently a free space for them to dump unfriendly pictures without any form of guilt but we seems undisturbed, you know why? It is a boring area of interest, no big politician will see that and recommend us as new media assistant, and hence we have to fertilize our skills in political events analysis at the expense of our societal negative changes.
Same craziness for selfie and probably acceptance of the eventual selfie on social media space coupled with “I sabi person” mentality, has led to a situation where Nigerians can hardly differentiate between who to beg for selfie shot and who they ought to naturally spit on or even stone. Don’t be surprised if you see a girl on 5 inches high hill running or a guy with heavy footwear running, it might be a politician (most times those responsible for our economic predicament) that was passing by, they must take the “selfie”.
Let me drop the curtain here and remind us all that these are issues our politicians will not address, they are issues we must see as a task for all, parents should care less about social media and structure their children, don’t leave them to take decision with what they do see on several social media platforms we have carelessly exposed them to. Our pride is seeing the next generation exhibiting characters that will make us happy and not characters that will make us use “wasted generation” to qualify them. God bless Nigeria!
Shomoye Abiodun a socio-political issues commentator writes from Wesley University of Science and Technology. He tweets via @MrShomoye
__________
Inspired by Steve Biko’s ‘I Write What I Like‘, OP-UNEDITED is the citizen opinion segment of SIGNAL. All opinions posted on the OP-UNEDITED page are unedited and the raw opinions of the writers.
Do you have an opinion on any topic whatsoever and you want it published to reach a wide audience? Send it to us at signalareport@signalng.com
Follow us on Twitter at @thesignalng
Copyright 2015 SIGNAL. Permission to use portions of this article is granted provided appropriate credits are given to www.signalng.com and other relevant sources.
