The Olodo Uprising is Deeper and More Fatal than You Think

Did you see Egungun of Lagos’s interview with ishowspeed during his foray to Nigeria earlier this year?

The hilarious, yet embarrassing 30-second struggle of an exchange flooded the internet with memes, reactions, and epistles on how unintellectual the Lagos-based socialite, who earns his coins from interviewing beautiful black women ready to turn against the camera for his audience’s entertainment appeared. That short show, on its own, encapsulates the entire essence of the lack of substance in the Nigerian entertainment system today, which was candidly described by Nigerian rapper, Ycee, as “the Olodo Uprising” during his recent feature on the Afropolitan Podcast. 

Now, as much as I agree with Ycee’s expression of there being a huge anti-intellectual trend in the country, I don’t think it is on the uprise; the Olodos have long risen, and we are only seeing the consequence of an elongated period of letting any and everything be plausible. 

The word “Olodo” (Olodo Rabata in critical situations) is a Yoruba and Pidgin-derived slur that describes an individual that is canonically slow, and unintellectual. In the context Ycee uses the term, he calls out a sudden increase in low-brow content across the internet, which he umbrellas under an on-the-spot term “Peller Culture.” And the responses that followed Ycee’s comment almost cap it all up, as many streamers, media influencers, and skit specialists took it upon themselves to explain how this unintellectualism is a result of the horrid state of the job market, the fruitlessness of the Nigerian education system, and of course, the long-drawn conclusion that not everybody is programmed for schools. 

These problems are valid, but they actually aren’t what make up an Olodo. It is the unawareness and ignorance of the ramifications of what we make public that classifies us as dull. And that’s why the influx of skits that thrive on female objectification has indirectly surged the rates of violence and abuse against women, and the super transactional state of the country has made internet fraud a Nigerian adjective. 

Have you ever wondered why exactly the most surface-level content from these very aberrant niches keeps us entertained? A friend recently made me understand that our brains yearn for the easiest consumable content, and for that sake, clips of the Ponzi lifestyles, baseless online arguments about the superior gender, videos of grown men wearing “man-diapers,” and other fantasias are the most digestible.

However, as fair as that is, the bigger question is why exactly are there so many of these types of content out there, so much so that it has turned into a daring quest to discover content online that reflects the real world outside?

The paramount factor here is the intense commercialization of the Nigerian moral system, which is rooted in a huge faction of the country being immersed in systemically induced poverty. There is no good or bad in this part of the world, it’s just what pays; for what doesn’t pay is considered evil. Through this framework, the rich dictate what is moral, offensive, and chic. Remember the keyword here is “rich,” not the smartest, not the most skilled, nor the noocrats; just the rich. 

At the same time, the constantly growing divide between the wealthy and the other sub-social classes that still remain in Nigeria leaves youths without jobs at the mercy of their survival. Even if it involves them being reduced to jesters for obvious obnoxious public figures for proxy-crumbs, or shattering their moral compasses (if any), and saying the most ignorant, demeaning, and insensitive things online for the rubber coins media juggernauts throw at us, in one way or another. 

The economy ceaselessly calls on us to strip ourselves of whatever cognitive dignity we have, and ensures  the average Nigerian makes a fool of themself before they deserve a glimmer of comfort. Whether it is by taking part in degrading social media challenges, having to wrestle every morning in the name of the transport system, or being fraudulent in the face of how much it is destroying everything  around you, subtly, you actually have to be stupid to exist here. 

The presence of the Nigerian government cannot be missed in the connotation of how slow the people are. While speaking with Afropolitan, Ycee also added that it seemed there is an ongoing war against intellectualism, and this cued a theory this writer has had. An era from history that I have long found fascinating is the “Bread and Circus” tactical period before the fall of the Roman Empire. During this period, the government fed the people and made them giggle with clown performances over and over again, in order to cover up the crumbling state of the empire. Now, this isn’t a direct accusation of the Nigerian government implementing this same technique on the people. However, it isn’t far-fetched that in a system steadily depleting like ours, coupled with the tense lack of bread, the opportunity cost would be an immeasurable amount of circuses. Circus Circus.  

And in the last decade, there has been a slow, steady, and obvious shift in the Nigerian public industry. From shows like the Sunday night “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” the “Cowbellpedia” and “STARK” game shows, and many other programs that caused us to actually think for ourselves, to the most baseless distractions that you can think of. 

To make matters worse, we are further being fed horrifying clips of kidnappings, killings, the news of constant insecurity that has spread across the country, and vices that further weaken the aspects that still carry any form of resilience or empirics inside of us. Because there is no probable reason why videos that portray acts of insecurity and the most sensitive aspects of these appalled and degraded systems that continuously test the limits of how far we can be pushed are put on display as comedy. What exactly are you laughing for? 

The  memeification of the Nigerian reality cannot be spoken about as clearly as possible without ignoring the obvious demonization of education in the country. While the high acts of terrorism in the North forcefully drag children from schools, Southern youths have been demoralized from dreaming past their first scam victim as a result of the glorification of yahoo yahoo. Talkless of the overall crippled formal education network that makes it a hustle to get through school. It’s clear that the system is forcefully trying to breed more Olodos than already exists. 

This is the point where the writer comes up with possible solutions, but unfortunately, the situation is bleaker than a paragraph on how reading books would save us, or proper political participation would turn the tide. Everything around us grows faultier at every single turn of the clock. However, it’s bleak, but it isn’t impossible. As much as they are hordes of Olodos in our midst, so too do we have the most impressive minds amongst us. The only way out is to keep those little sparks around us alive, continue to make genuine contributions, put out art that portrays who we really are, speak against the obvious demonization of erudition, refuse to be shamed for being reasonable, and, most of all, try the hardest to think for yourself.