The Paradox of Nigerian Music’s Global Success

On the 11th of October 2025, Travis Scott’s globe-trotting Utopia tour, which has seen him performing in far-flung cities of the world—among them Reading, São Paulo, and Bramham—led him to the 94,000 capacity FNB stadium in South Africa, the largest in Africa. As Travis Scott bounded up the stage, the teeming audience—which, viewed from above, looked like a sea of tiny dots—broke out in fitful screams. The central screen was emblazoned with bold red text that read: “CIRCUS MAXIMUS,” Latin for the largest circus. The spectral melodies of Hyaena, which open his 2023 album Utopia, began playing, against the backdrop of wildly flaying pyrotechnics. Soon Scott was prancing around onstage, wearing an all-white athleisure fit and dark shades.

Last week as clips from the concert marinated and simmered on social media, a deluge of conversations sprang up. In Nigeria, the discussions around the show were mostly dominated by rueful diatribes bemoaning how a show of that technical quality, featuring a non-Nigerian global artist, would be impossible to execute in Nigeria. “Sadly this kind of show can’t happen in Lagos smh,” a resigned tweet reads. Another tweet by rising rapper Abstraktt has been viewed nearly a million times, it reads: “Nigeria is not a serious country. Big 2025 we can’t even host a concert of this capacity. Egbon adugbo of africa. 4th world country. God help us.” 

Days before Travis Scott’s show in South Africa, Gunna, whose latest album The Last Wun features Wizkid, Burna Boy, and Asake, announced a world tour featuring cities in North America, Europe, and Australia, with Cape Town and Johannesburg being the only African cities on the list. Peruse his Instagram and X comments section and witness Nigerians moaning about the absence of a Nigerian city despite the artist’s increasing popularity in Nigeria—months ago when his album, The Last Wun, was released, it dominated charts in the country, spawning several hits. 

Taken together, these incidents paint a sobering picture: despite the global proliferation of Nigerian music and Nigeria’s increasing reputation as a major cultural center, less-than-ideal conditions at home, here in Nigeria, continue to hamstring the industry. Imagine the possibilities if Travis Scott’s Utopia Tour were to make a stop in Nigeria. Outside of the boost it would give the local economy, the excitement and thrill it would supply fans, and the branding points it would score Nigeria, shows like these are especially beneficial for the creative sector because they facilitate major culture, knowledge, and skill exchange. Local workers and artists can glean knowledge from their foreign counterparts. These shows also deepen ties between stakeholders in both countries, creating a smoother path for future projects. 

Of course, Gunna, Travis Scott, and countless others who have skipped Nigeria in their touring circuits despite their ties with the country—Travis Scott filmed the video for Hyaena in Kano and has songs with Asake and BurnaBoy—do so for some reasons. What then might these reasons be? The biggest and most significant hindrance comes down to the economics: Nigerians are too financially hamstrung, we don’t have enough people with the purchasing power required to make shows like this happen easily. 

A tweet by A&R, talent developer, and entertainment consultant Bizzle Osikoya gives an overview of the calculus: “The fans can’t afford the tickets, Travis’ booking fee is like $1.5m minus production and logistics, you end up spending $4m-5m for the show. Which is like ₦7.3b. Let’s say we use a 20,000 capacity venue. Each ticket will be like ₦367,500 which Nigerian promoter is ready to do this? And this figure is minus profit.”

This however doesn’t mean a show like Travis Scott’s South Africa show is impossible to execute, from a purely financial perspective. On the 18th and 19th of October, Travis Scott held concerts in India, a country where the purchasing power of the average citizen is comparable to Nigeria. How were they able to make the financials work? The first piece of the puzzle is scale: the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in New Delhi, where the shows were held, can seat up to 60,000 people. The other strategy deployed was broadening the spectrum of price points at which tickets were sold. As opposed to the standard practice of issuing concert tickets at, more or less, the same price point, tickets ranged from 860 Rupees (N14k) to as high as 34,000 Rupees (N556,000). 

Those with means were charged more to offset some of the cost for those on the lower end of the income scale. It’s a strategy that could work wonderfully well in Nigeria where society is riven by an ever-widening income disparity and the wealthy—quite frankly—would rather segregate themselves from us plebeians—it’s a flawed system but trade-offs have to be made. 

Nigeria’s abysmal reputation is another factor preventing global stars from holding concerts in Nigeria. In Maradona, from Odumodublvck’s Industry Machine, Saweetie raps about how people warned her against coming to Nigeria, citing safety concerns. “They were saying it wasn’t safe to come to Nigeria/ It wasn’t safe for you (expletive)/’Cause I’m the motherf*ck*ng Icy and I’m standing here ten toes down.” The global rise of Afrobeats and the increasing popularity of Detty December have done a great deal to burnish Nigeria’s reputation but the aftertaste of corruption, infrastructural decay, and crippling security challenges still lingers.

The third challenge is our technical capacity to execute a show of global standards. Explaining the sub-par production quality of The Headies, Nigeria’s premier awards show, Ayo Animashaun, the founder, has blamed the limits of Nigeria’s production capacity. This excuse has been criticized as too simplistic but it offers a modicum of truth, this is after all a country where some of our biggest shows have been plagued by production failures and general organizational problems. 

On this front, however, things are starting to change. As I observed in an article published earlier this year, Nigeria’s concert culture is experiencing a Renaissance, evidenced by concerts like  Rema’s Homecoming in Benin, and Seyi Vibez’ TBS show. This year Odumodublvck and Llona have also toured cities across the country and Davido has announced a tour spanning 5 cities in the country. All of these suggest that the wheels of change are churning at an increasing velocity. The global success of Nigerian music has all but failed to score lasting gains for the local industry but if the events and trends of this year are any indicator, things are starting to change for the better.