The 'Goldie Situation', By Eseoghene Al-Faruq Ohwojeheri: Stop This Madness of Underserved Honour

19 February, 2013

 

By Eseoghene Al-Faruq Ohwojeheri, Benin City

About ten years ago I lost a friend in an armed robbery incident. Obviously, the armed robbers were not satisfied with robbing. They needed to make a point by harming someone in the house and my friend's mother was their target. As they swung the axe, my friend, who was the scholar of our class in secondary school, protected his mother with his head… He died. No national award, no postmortem speech from the Governor and, of course, no celebrity burial; he was just another guy, the fact that he took a battle axe to his head for his mother was irrelevant.

This and many more of it happens in a country wherein people get millions both in local and foreign currency for playing football; a country wherein comedians shake hands with the President and women who kiss strange men on camera in the name of acting take home National Award, and an immoral youth who made fame singing about his private part, is given special opportunity to interview the President in a desperate campaign strategy because the thinking is that the community is populated by zombies and bimbos who will vote in a PHD holder on the "honour" of a nuisance whose only relevance to society, apart from lewd music, is competition in air and space. Thus, the question every sane Nigerian should be asking is: when will this madness of underserved honour stop?

The death of the musician from Ekiti, Goldie Harvey, and the attempt to make it seem like we lost an icon is another and perhaps the worst of all these madness. I do not believe that death, which we will all face, should make you a hero except you died an honourable death. When people just drop dead we grieve and console the family not tell blatant lies as to who they were. This is why the statement of the Ekiti State Governor is worrisome. Mr. Kayode Fayemi is reported to have described Goldie as a "great daughter of Ekiti State", and one has to wonder upon what was this greatness achieved? Are people now great for singing meaningless songs with promiscuous suggestions or for taking and publishing suggestive photos of themselves?

Since when did we consider it greatness to appeal to the sexual cravings of perverts and run after men on camera in the name of a reality show that is far from reality? Since when did it become great achievement that a lady is even thought of as being a junkie in her life time? How can this be great?