Ehen… Welcome once again to the ‘OCHI’IDOMA’s palace, and we have a great show 2nite…lol. (guess where I got that from?). Anyways, we’re here at 15 – 11 of the top 20 wow moments in naija culture for the year 2010. If you’re just joining us, Please check out Top 20 Wow! Moments In Naija Culture 2010 [20-16] and catch up.
Here goes:
15. Welcome To Nigeria trends Globally on twitter
Twitter has 190 million users from all over the world. By my guess it’ll take at least 10-15% of those users to be tweeting about the same topic for that topic to trend globally. That is at least 19 million users. What started as just something to tweet about Nigeria, the #welcometonigeria TT slowly blew up to even where non-nigerians were tweeting what they knew about Nigeria. Now granted it wasn’t all good stuff, but the fact that it did trend globally showed all us the power Nigerians have in social networking sites, esp twitter. Pretty impressive if you ask me. I don’t think we’ve trended globally since then. oh wait… yes we did
14. LightUpNigeria On CNN
Staying on twitter trends, the Light Up Nigeria movement didn’t end up on the top trends for the day on twitter but it landed on the radar of an even bigger platform; CNN. I personally was in awe as I watched as the correspondent on CNN went into details about the lightupnigeria movement and the massive support it had gotten on twitter and facebook. It was a moment of pride for most young Nigerians like myself who sometimes feel helpless in resovling the anemic power situation in Nigeria. If not for anything, that day we let our voice be heard on the world biggest news platform.
13. Fela On Broadway Gets 11 Nods from Tony Awards
The hit music fela on broadway has been a huge success over the past year. As a Nigerian, chances are you really wanted to go see it, and you were happy that Fela, one of Nigeria’s greatest musical and political icons ended up on Broadway in New York, thousands of miles away from Kalakuta Republic. More surprising however was when news broke out that Fela on Broadway had gotten nominated for 11 Tony Awards. I, being a die hard Fela fan, was just too excited. More like elated. You mean this Fela that used to wear pant on stage in the shrine in yaba is now being acknowledged at the Tony awards? Heavy heavy sonting. *fists in the air*… The Legacy is too strong.
12. Kidnapping Of 15 children in Aba
Kidnapping is nothing new to most of us Nigerians. It’s almost daily news, and if you’re from the east or lived in the east, you definitely know of 1 or 3 people that have been kidnapped. However a few days before the Naija @ 50 celebrations, news broke out that 15 children, ages 5-13 had been kidnapped on the way to school in Aba, and the whole country was straight up stunned. How bad can it be where you have to kidnap little kids. Like are we really being serious here. Talk about a serious black eye for Nigeria at the dawn of Independence day celebration. As for me, I was pissed, shocked, confused and almost depressed that the kidnapping situation had gotten that bad. On a slightly positive note, at least they were recovered safely the day before independence day, but that’s not saying too much really.
11. Independence Day Budget + Cake Budget
There’s no constant power. There’s rarely any drinking water flowing from the tap, or even any water flowing from the tap sef. The security system is in shambles. Universities are constantly on strike. But somehow, because we are celebrating our 50th year independence, there is a budget of 6.7billion naira (approx $45 million) to spend on the celebrations, which included a completely mind boggling budget of N72 million for a cake. How this amount of money was approved for all this eludes all of us. The rational behind this decision flies right over our heads. This to me, is probably one of the most shocking decisions I’ve ever seen from the Nigerian Govt…and I’ve lived long enough to see a lot. This goes beyond all kinds of explanations. Even more shocking is the actual cake itself. I don’t think there is anything 72 million about it.
Top 20 Wow! Moments In Naija Culture 2010 [10-6]
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We’re down to the top 10 of the top wow moments in naija culture in 2010, and me sef don begin think, what else tops these things we’ve listed so far. Yes there’s more, and I’m sure some of you guys know that we never even land some the main, the main things. Once again, this is all my opinion so you have the right to disagree.
Catch up with us 20 -16, and 15-11
10. IBB running for President
It started earlier this year when there were rumors that some western leaders were encouraging IBB to run for the 2010 elecstions in Nigeria, and at the time most of us didn’t take it seriously. A few months later, the rumors become stronger and before you know it, one of the most controversial leaders of our time is running for the presidential elections again. The question to most of us, especially the youth, was Why? I’m not necessarily saying that I’m against his campaign, cos afterall it is a free country and he’s a Nigerian so he has every right to run, but in a time when most of us are looking to the future, it’s quite puzzling to phantom the idea of a ruler from 25 years ago coming back to run for elections. I thought the future was ours. What happened? That’s all I’m going to say.
Side note: It doesn’t matter who you vote for, just make sure you vote in the elections next year.
9. Uche Eze (CEO Bella Naija) On Oprah and CNN
Blogging 3-4 years ago was just something we did to pass time, state our opionions withouth being restricted to 150 characters on facebook, practice our writing skills, and talk about fashion, music, gist and all that. I’ve known of bella naija since her blogspot days, and so when I heard she was featured on Oprah, I was down right shocked (in a good way). A few months later, she’s part of CNN’s coverage of Nigeria at 50. That has put her and blogging in Nigeria on a whole new platform. Bella naija is now handsdown the #1 fashion and style blog in Africa. Now that’s how you represent. I’m sure those of us that would say “oh it’s just a blog” are now looking at this whole thing a whole lot different.
8. 9ice vs Ruggedman feat. Toni Payne… Supporting cast: Onyeka Onwenu
As most of us know, Indigenous artist 9ice and his ex-wife Toni Payne split earlier this year. As surprising (or maybe not for some) as that was, what ensued for the next months after was what made all of us say, “NA WA O.” They split… Rumors surface that Toni Payne gave Ruggedman man “nodding”, Rugged man leaks a conversation he had with 9ice concerning the whole issue, 9ice records a diss track to Ruggedman, Ruggedman responds, Toni Payne has a meltdown on twitter, and Onyeka Onwenu writes a long letter to a newspaper in defense of an article that portrayed Toni Payne as not so morally upright. Sigh.. Talk about major drama, and we might still see more. All depends… Cos 9ice is supposed to release a video for his diss track. All in all it’s been pretty dramatic, and the drama loving people of Nigeria love it. Not me tho… I stay #dramafree. Lol.
7. Abuja Independence Day Bombing
No secret, Nigeria turned 50 on october 1st, and while we were complaining about the budget, or the national cake, and some of us celebrating by attending the festivities in eagles square, a few bombs went off to let us know that all is not well. Now most of us nigerians are used to armed robbers, and kidnappers, but bombs? When did we turn into Afghanistan (no offense). Do we now need to start getting concerned about bombings. Even tho the main target wasn’t hit, there were still causalities (anywhere from 13-101), and most of all we have been terrorized on a large scale. More shocking tho, was the fact that apparently the govt was warned of these attacks and somehow nothing was done. Anyways… let me not turn this into a rant. Crazy moment I’m still recovering from.
6. Sani Kaita turns to Jackie Chan
World Cup 2010. One of the most watched competitions in history. Nigeria plays Greece after losing 1-0 to Argentina. This was supposed to be the game where we showed the world that our loss to Argentina was a fluke, and that we were better than we were given credit for. All is good, and we’re up 1-0 against greece (that had never won a world cup game before), and somehow in the middle of a non significant throwing play, Sani Kaita transforms into a Ninja and decides to kick the greek player for no real reason. Red card comes out, Sani Kaita is on the floor with his hands over his head (thinking I don die o), and before you know what’s happening Greece scores, and in the second half, they score again and win. I think to most nigerians, shock does not really describe that whole fiasco. More like murderous rage. Mr. Kaita received as much death threats as MJ’s fan mail. The media exploded and all kinds of funny jokes came out of it. It wasnt funny tho… not at all. At all, At all. So not funny. So that was beginning of Bye Bye Naija for World Cup 2010. See you in 2014… if we make it.
… we’re almost there. 5-1 coming up next… stay tuned
Do you know any Wow! Moments In Naija Culture 2010?
