Welcome to the 21st century in Nigeria. Smartphones are almost the same cost as Johnny Rocket’s Hamburgers. Sim cards are free. Internet services are fairly faster than Nipost’s emails. Information moves quicker than Daily Times’ newspaper vendors. This change is affecting everything. In the pre-GSM era, Nigerian Celebrities would pray for a spot on Saturday Punch or the other weekend tabloids for exclusive interviews or some amount of exposure. So, you were either good enough to compete with the Sunny Okosun’s and Onyeka Onwenu’s or you were frightening enough to hit the pages almost everyday as a Shina Rambo or you were controversial enough to share spots with Regina Askia on these newspapers. There was no internet. The masses kept abreast with entertainment news only a week after the papers had been discarded.
In this age, everyone has a Blackberry. Everyone has a blog. There are over 5000 entertainment blogs in Nigeria. Everyone wants to break the news but only a few get exclusive content so everyone copy-pastes whether it is true or a lie. In this era, everyone is a celebrity. If you hit the red carpet of events, and a hundred blogs can post your pictures, same pictures and repeat that procedure 4 times in a month, you are a celeb. You can make statements. Fashion statements. You can go to Twitter and start a Tweet war. Dahz all.
The problem with overexposure is that your news does not become news eventually and people go like “oh Tonto.. Now what? Unto the next abeg”. Who are the 8 celebrities in Nigeria who get more press, media attention than they need for their health. In no particular order, Segun Adekoye lists them below.
