In Nigeria, Shame is the Substance of Things Hoped For

What shall it profit a people to lack shame? 

What does it really profit a nation of over 180 million people to consistently platform and promote individuals with an addiction to humiliation? There comes a time when one must sit back, rest their hands on their head, exhale, and declare that it all doesn’t make sense. The extent to which we churn out deliberate cringe does not make sense. Trained, sustained obliviousness to class division and socioeconomic disparity does not make sense. Transparency with no justifiable purpose than visibility as content fodder does not make sense. Creative geniuses who lose control around foreigners do not make sense. Academic giants subjecting themselves to the capricious whims of political godfathers makes no sense. None of it makes sense. Not a single bit of the embarrassment we love to subject ourselves to makes sense. 

Picture this: Twenty fully sane adults walk into a white room to be screened for the poverty gene. The screening panel consists of Sirraheem, a relatively untalented rapper whose claim to fame is a viral meme record, and whose motion since then is unmistakably tied to his billionaire father’s industrialist legacy, Ireti Zaccheus, a fashion savvy entrepreneur whose equally moneyed origins compliment well-documented innovation in the streetwear space, and Perliks, a music video director known for his distinct visual style and flair for fashion, with roots on the opposite end of the tax bracket. For 2 minutes each, these 20 adults would attempt to convince the panel of being from rich backgrounds. The chosen 20 would combine sacrilegious accents, false claims about countries visited and cuisines consumed, the worst conversation diversions since R Kelly’s infamous Gayle King interview, and other random tidbits in a show of theatrical talent. The panel, in return, has to sniff out those whose genes are just too rough to be rich. Rich vs Poor. NEPO vs LAPO. Round 1. 

The first contestant on the show is incorrectly profiled as a LAPO baby by 2 of the 3 panelists. When the panellist who makes the right pick explains the decision, he states that, “You can tell. He’s not hungry.” The second contestant is correctly profiled as LAPO. During her cross-examination, questions range from the name of her shoes to her father’s line of work. She’s proud of the reveal, acknowledging her lower-class status while also noting that she knows the rapper on TikTok. The third contestant fails to convince the panel about having been to Manchester, UK, twice for vacations, among other details. All 3 were on to him rather quickly. One of the two rich offspring affirms that “Manny (Manchester) is my ends.” The other explains that the ‘Springfield’ the contestant mentions is ‘Spitzerfield.’ This conversation continues for 46 minutes in total: Checking out their footwear and pedicures. Tapping into transient wealth-detection ‘feelings.’ Asking for LAPO names because apparently a name like “Anjola” isn’t bourgeois enough. If you are comfortable with watching the most derisive comments slipped in casually as anecdotes, you should watch through. At some point, a contestant even tells the rapper panellist to “tone down the stereotypes,” while the streetwear guru emphasises that “it’s all just cruise.” 

But nothing is ever “just cruise” (Perhaps, this was meant as a play on words—the producers of the show are Cruise, a YouTube channel for ‘meaningful conversations across Africa via social experiments’). It speaks to a high level of tone-deaf reasoning that anyone on the team felt that their previous videos, many of which truly are meaningful, compare to one in which three rich people drill others to confirm whether they live below the poverty line or not. The previous three videos on the channel include conversations between mothers and sons, a family face-off to see how well members know each other, and conversations with an ex-convict. These are topical conversations, material the conventional TV night show would have done in the past, but now belong elsewhere in the media space. To compare this to an episode where people have to fake accents and backstories to convince others that they are or aren’t rich, with the overall result being proof that rich people can telepathically identify each other, is not so far off in tone deafness from Marie Antoinette’s “Give them cake” speech.  

Beyond the hilarity of watching class markers being manipulated in real time and the way it becomes evident that the NEPO panellists can’t do without bragging about affluence, a major important consideration is that people were willing to subject themselves to the experience. Giddy, even. Eyes sparkled when the panellists declared them NEPO. And not in a way that says “I’m comfortable with my reality. That’s just what it is,” but in a way that shows that aspirational social-climbing and hollow visibility are very much the play here. Like the panelists, some also believe it’s just ‘cruise.’ Being made fun of by fellow young adults, one of whom can barely hold a candle to the work experience any of the contestants has put in, isn’t harmless fun. It is just capitalising on a lack of shame for clicks. It is evidence #1 trillion of people who do not grasp the socio-economic conditions that make such disparity possible in the first place. Even without eating the rich, people should not allow themselves to become entertainment fodder. We should not become like the jesters of old, on display for the lords and ladies of the castle just because. 

The situation gets worse when you realise that in January, Cruise invited the rapper’s 19-year-old brother for an episode. He took center stage while 20 regular Nigerians asked questions. 2 minutes and 55 seconds in, the billionaire’s son tells us that “Being broke is a mindset” while responding to a question about what being broke means to him. 4 minutes and 31 seconds in, he talks about just overhearing the price of fuel about 3 days prior, before adding that Nigeria today is better than it was 3 years ago. He clarifies that we (read: the average Nigerian) do not see the changes compared to those who live outside the country. This writer will spare you the agony of third-hand embarrassment from watching the entire video, but know that, somehow, one grown adult thought it right to ask a 19-year-old on a date, another, unsurprisingly, asked for a giveaway, and yet another for investment ideas. To some participants’ credit, their actions showed groundedness and understanding of the dynamics at play. Not everyone laughed. Some visibly resented the flippancy with which he addressed their socioeconomic conditions.  Still, the extent to which others were eager to shirk shame and shoot shots to shine—that’s if you consider that sort of thing to be impressive—was an exercise in circus proficiency. 

This dalliance is not just a poor vs rich thing, as our willingness to be subjected to public humiliation extends elsewhere on the class ladder. It exists even at the top. Celebrities routinely bring personal details for the internet’s market square to deliberate on. Active X and Instagram users have, for the past week, watched Frank Edoho and his ex-wife, Sandra Onyenucheya, engage in a back-and-forth over infidelity, most of it trailing back to Edoho. Appalling doesn’t even begin to describe the amount of detachment from backlash one needs to have carried on as he did, exposing himself, Onyenucheya, and their kids to a barrage of inquisitions from an audience who couldn’t care less about the mental health of said kids. 

Before their split, 2Baba and Annie Macaulay were always in the public eye, largely due to 2Baba’s poorly informed decisions, but also because, for reasons best known to her and which we perhaps have no right to judge, Macaulay insisted on bringing personal matters for the audience to judge. Even after the split, 2Baba has continued to uphold this tradition. After spending 25 years on stage, constantly in front of camera crews and paparazzi eager for front page exclusives, one would assume that even less humiliation would be desired by the singer. On the contrary, he and many of our celebrities go the opposite route. If there’s even the slightest chance of receiving a public shaming, they’re there. Front and centre. Up, bright and early, for the opportunity to be slated. It’s a glorious day on the internet when another cringeworthy clip goes viral. 

In her seminal, award-winning 2019 essay, “Why I’m no longer talking to Nigerians about race,” South African writer Panashe Chigumadzi described a phenomenon where Nigerian literati seemed to approach race relations by emphasising pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps and by unrepentantly ignoring the tensions within these dynamics. While this writer disagrees with a great deal of the arguments put forward in the essay, it’s difficult to look away from how they relate to the actions of Nigerians on the internet. From TikTok to YouTube comment sections, there’s a teeming obsession with foreign superiority. We’re so obsessed with being recognised by others that we ignore the circumstances that make them other-ed in the first place. It’s why a French-Lebanese ‘creative’ would utilise culture as caricature, feigning a Nigerian accent and still be applauded for representation. Or why dozens of content creators use jollof rice or pidgin as talking points in their videos, aware of the flood of comments and views on the horizon. Our desire to be seen supersedes the cost for which we are seen. And if it means we become the butts of hideous, racist jokes, so be it. 

In fairness, some of this stems from a persistent feeling of dismissal, first perpetrated along colonial lines. When dehumanisation becomes inheritance, it takes concerted efforts to transform self-worth on a grand scale, especially for a monoracial culture like ours where the frequency of encounters with other races is as much a class indicator as DSTV subscription bouquets. It reflects in interactions with other black-skinned folk across the globe. Some other similarly colonised African countries have moved past revering ‘lighter shades.’ Not us. 

“Reading the actions of some as representative of the broader populace is problematic.” “Making this situation a Nigerian thing is unfair to those who take time out of their blackout-filled days to question the value of constant humiliation rituals.” This writer agrees with both claims. That said, subjective criticism of this sort serves its purpose if it means that one more person reconsiders putting out embarrassing content in hopes of making money, being seen, or whatever it is that has made shame the substance of things hoped for. We can argue all we want that shamelessness is more characteristic of the internet age as a whole than it is of our people’s love for boos, or even that economic conditioning plays a key role. It won’t change the fact that we love boos. We love jeers, insults, and long-winding X threads about the illogicality of our stances. We love to be loved for the wrong reasons. It doesn’t make one any less patriotic about Nigeria. It just makes you honest about our values.