• Friday, March 29, 2024
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BusinessDay

No, don’t dance for me

rhythmic music

Believe me; I’m fully aware of the need for business people to do just about anything within the ambit of the law to attract attention to their products and services. There is however something that gets to me whenever I’m unlucky enough to come across it and it’s the raucous roadshows

You know the ones. Awareness campaigns usually for fast-moving consumer goods. The most nauseating part is not the loud music per se, though that at best is a mild irritant, but the sight of the ladies and young men dancing frantically to attract the attention of passers-by. It reminds me of the way oyinbo used to mock the black, playing us some rhythmic music to keep us happy and suppress the urge to agitate for better treatment, while we foolishly dance to our heart’s content and forget our troubles.

As I watch these young people dance so energetically to earn their keep, it always strikes me as no less demeaning. In equal measure I also find it insulting as a member of the public, whose attention they are so desperately try to attract.

Are you telling us that we’re really that simple-minded? So, the best possible way to draw our attention to your product is to position a van on the street with music blaring from it and have a bunch of young men and women dance so frantically you could swear their lives depended on it? Is the Nigerian public that unsophisticated?

So, we’ve been reduced to easy pickings by youths gyrating and genuflecting as if demon-possessed? Wearing misfitting clothes reminiscent of rags worn by those who’ve lost their minds as sometimes depicted in Nollywood movies, it becomes quite obvious these youths have been told that the more ludicrous they look, the more they are likely to grab the attention of passers-by. What a pity.

Nigerians should be accorded dignity always. Not taken advantage of by their compatriots or even foreigners for that matter, just because they’re a little hard up. When oyinbo does it we label them racists or social Darwinists who believe in their heart of hearts that some people are inferior to others. This erroneous notion lies at the root of most ethnocentric biases. There’s always a risk when you judge others by your own customs and standard that you’ll come to that conclusion and that usually spells the beginning of racism.

As I watch these young people dance so energetically to earn their keep, it always strikes me as no less demeaning. In equal measure I also find it insulting as a member of the public, whose attention they are so desperately try to attract

The Europeans, buoyed by their claim to civilisation, came to this conclusion when they encountered the “uncultured” and uneducated Africans. If that was their excuse to treat the Africans with such disdain back then, what is our excuse for doing the same to each other now?

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Commercial organisations in Nigeria have for as long as I remember employed the use of trailers to transport their workers to and from work. In developed countries it has for long become an offense not to use one’s seat belt when sitting in the rear seat of a vehicle, not to talk of the front seat. Here in Nigeria many organisations still get away with herding human beings back and forth in trailers like cattle! Something the foreign ones amongst them can’t do in their home country. I’ve said it before, whether our governments stand up for our rights or not, as they have been voted into power to do, Nigerian lives still matter.

Social media was recently awash with the news of xenophobic attacks in South Africa, especially against Nigerians. How proud we would have felt as Nigerians if all media, local and foreign, regaled us of how our government swiftly moved like a knight in shining armour, not only to protect our people’s lives but to safeguard our honour. Alas, it wasn’t to be. Typical of what we have all come to expect of this government, for several days it was a deafening silence.

Distress calls from our compatriots over there in SA appeared not to have been heard and many, within a twinkling of an eye, lost all they had. By the time the lion woke up from its slumber with a muted roar, many of its cubs had already suffered fatal injuries. For many, the government’s feeble retaliatory action of withdrawing from the World Economic Forum being hosted by the South Africans represented a classic case of too little coming too late.

As if to buttress how little the value placed on Nigerian lives really is, it wasn’t long before news circulated about how as a last-ditch effort to escape lynching, Nigerians flocked to the surest refuge they could think of, the Nigerian embassy, but were allegedly turned back. Still, we wonder why foreigners treat us the way they do. We do worse to ourselves. No matter how tough things are in the country every Nigerian deserves to be treated with dignity.

I read somewhere that one Martin Niemoller was so disgusted by the silence and failure to act by people of goodwill against the tyrannical rule of the Nazis in Germany that he once said, “First, they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me.”

Many of us may be too privileged to jump at the chance of a free ride, albeit in a trailer. Neither may we be so hard up as to relish the thought of dancing for a few coins; even if it means laying aside our dignity for an hour or two. But take my word for it, if we continue to keep silent in the presence of such abasement of others, one day we’ll wake up to face a Pharaoh who knows not Joseph.

Changing the nation…one mind at a time.