NIGERIA AND HER INFERIORITY COMPLEX.
Aug 15th, 2008 by admin
The latest craze in Nigeria is the mad rush by Nigerian companies and government agencies to appear to sponsor specific programs, or advertise on CNN. While I can excuse and defend a few of them, I beg to declare that most of it is absolute hogwash. I do not know what statistics gave these sponsors the confidence that CNN would best serve the purposes of their intended target. I even doubt further if Nigerian experts in advertising and public relations were ever consulted before they hurriedly signed off the expensive invoices. Many of them have refused to patronize the local media with the same degree of religious fervor, and where they do, have refused to pay the same premium rates.
While banks may claim to seek international customers and telecom companies may claim that theirs is an international product, what do you make of the otherwise likeable Lagos State Government that has chosen to waste its scarce resources by engaging Pastors, Imams, ex-Commissioners, and others on CNN to preach to citizens on meeting their tax obligations?
Tax is meant to be paid by the locals. Why are we running ads that would be watched mostly by non-Nigerians and non-Lagosians? Why do we also want to wash our dirty underwear in public by telling the whole world that we are a nation of defaulters and crooks? Someone should tell me if such ads have been run before by even countries like Great Britain and the United States where tax laws are very strict and rigid.
Nigeria, being a country of the bandwagon effect, every local government chairman, or Councilor, would soon find one flimsy excuse or the other to jump on this train of irrationality by advertising his face on CNN when indeed he has nothing to offer.
Also, I’m flabbergasted by a few of the banks. Why would Zenith bank waste its hard-earned dollars on sponsoring a much weaker and stupidly negative, ‘Inside Africa’, that shows uninspiring, and unflattering, footages of Africa – the usual stereotypes that sell like hot cakes in the West. Of what relevance, or worth, are those nonsensical stories to any bank? The bank was even cruelly short-changed when the program was practically broken into two and the other half christened “All about Africa”, or whatever, was sold to a beauty company. Worse still, yet another contraption was sold to yet another Nigerian Bank, Intercontinental Bank Plc, the new face of leadership, as its slogan goes. One of the banks even forgot to add that the bank is located somewhere in Nigeria, assuming that all CNN watchers know its address, or country of origin.
We are fond of belittling whatever is ours. The Nigerian Media has come of age and it can carry our campaigns as far as needed.
Dele Momodu