Nigerians are a
rare breed. No other people of any race and clime I know, are so good at
"copyright" or like I love to say "Copy-better"! Trust me, Nigerians
can adopt and adapt a style or culture, and modify it in ways that make it totally
unrecognizable to the originators/inventors.
Doubt me? Check out the fashion scene and you'll have
no problem believing me.
(only wish they'll just copy some wonderful
aspect of technology from the Western World, modify it and get them begging for
a piece of the action already)...#Justsayingandwishing! you know what they say about
wishes.
Now I have been tempted on several occasions to come to the
conclusion that the “copyright/copybetter” is inherent in every thoroughbred
Nigerian. Now that wouldn’t be such a bad thing if my wishes would
somehow become a reality. That's not the case however. It seems we have consciously
or unconsciously settled for copying the more negative aspects of other
people’s culture and modifying it. What we find for example, is that we have
become better at adaptation or trendsetting(in some laudable cases) than the people of
any known clime *IMO*
Lets take a trip down memory lane. Am pretty sure you’ll recall a time when the “Makossa dance” was
the rave of the moment in Nigeria. Nigerians only stopped short of forgetting
and relegating every known original Nigerian dance step and style to the back
burners. Every song became adapted to Makossa dance instead of the reverse being the case. Every Nigerian made it a point of duty to learn the Makossa dance *or risk the ol’ skool
label/tag”. It took Lagbaja’s “Konko-below” dance step and Weird MC’s ‘Ijoya” (and
gratefully so), to save us from that self-inflicted cultural slavery.
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