Lessons From The Entertainment IndustryFrom
That the Nigerian entertainment industry has grown in leaps and bounds is clear for everyone to see. In just a few short years, the music and film sectors respectively have made giant strides. It wasn’t so long ago that the term ‘home video’ didn’t exist, yet now, not only is the term here to stay, the home videos have been coming at a furious pace. In fact, it is not unheard of for one actor or actress to complete two movies in a month. First, there was Hollywood, then Bollywood, now we have Nollywood and even Gollywood. As asinine as it is to affix the term “wood†in association with any country’s film industry, one can at least try to understand it from the perspective that Hollywood is the utopia for film practitioners.
Aside from the movies, the music industry has also been growing steadily. A few short years ago, musicians were considered as directionless and purposeless. In fact, if you asked anyone what their occupation was and they dared to tell you that they were musicians, you would probably form an unfavourable mental image in your mind instantly. This was largely due to the fact that back in the day, musicians were not adequately compensated for their efforts and so, unless they had another means of supporting themselves, they almost always invariably looked scruffy. That was then; today the story is different. Not only do musicians, actors and actresses earn enough to get by, some lucky ones among them actually make so much money that they can afford to live a lavish lifestyle. By the way, the correct term is no longer musician, but artiste, as if this confers some sort of privilege on the entertainer in question. And this is where the problem lies. Nigeria is a country where anything that is perceived to be lucrative will bring a host of people bent on getting their own share of the hot cake. It has happened many times in the past; an example is football. Formerly, when people claimed to be footballers, they would be regarded as touts and good-for-nothings; until the money started pouring in. Then, those same uneducated touts who nobody would take seriously became the toast of the town as everybody wanted to associate with them and fathers who previously would have chased them away with shotguns if they had dared show their faces in their homes, now welcomed them with open arms as sons-in-law. Football academies sprung up everywhere and people started pushing their wards to actively engage in the game so as to become the next Kanu Nwankwo or Austin Okocha.
The same thing is playing itself out with young people who watch these artistes on television and decide that that is the kind of life they want. In every street corner there are burgeoning artistes of all ages who would rather haunt the premises of recording studios than do any other thing. I read an article in The New Yorker which I thought was really sad. The subject was the city of Lagos, and part of the focus was a young man who worked very hard gathering and selling scraps of plastics from rubbish dumps for sale. When he had managed to save about N75,000, he decided to use his hard-earned money to go to the recording studio to make some fuji music. Not only did the so-called producer do a terrible job, the young man wasted his money with nothing to show for his efforts. Yet, the amazing thing is that he still went back to working and saving money to go back and make some more fuji music, because he felt that was his ticket out of poverty. At the time the story went to press, he had managed to save about N15,000. I say, more power to him. However, on a more realistic note, would it not have been better for him to have invested his money in something that would have yielded him better dividends? Far be it from me to rain on anyone’s parade, but it is very alarming that the contagion of wannabe stardom has infected even young people in junior secondary school who should focus on their studies. They see the artistes as role models when the sad truth is that a lot of them do not do anything worth emulating. Most of the songs don’t even make any sense and the kind of behaviour these artistes exhibit leaves much to be desired. If it is not engaging in fisticuffs at nightclubs, it is fathering many children from different women or smoking banned substances. It has gotten so bad now that practically all home videos should come with a warning of graphic contents because it would seem that nothing is taboo anymore. You dare not watch most home videos with children in the same room because you just never know what the content of the movie will be. The focus of young people has shifted from working hard to make something of themselves to trying to figure out the fastest means of making money. There are simply no ethics to guide them and this is manifested in the kind of free-fall being experienced, not only in Nigeria, but other countries as well, Ghana included, where it would seem that there is no line between what is seemly and what is not. In western countries, artistes see such exhibitionism as their right to freely express themselves and this has led to a decay in morality and a loss of sensitivity to such issues.
Some artistes do get it right and are indeed worthy examples for aspiring younger ones to emulate. However, it is not, absolutely not, mandatory that everyone must be an artiste. May we please have shining luminaries in other fields so we can produce engineers who will build magnificent structures, scientists who will develop a cure for AIDS and cancer, inventors who will come up with innovative ideas and doctors who will pioneer new fields in medicine.
•Ejim wrote this piece for TheNEWS magazine
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