Copy Copy
Copy Button.Image: Free Images Live Okay…Nigerians are technically, the most effective ‘copiers’ in the world. The Chinese used to be the ones adept at replicating whatever they saw, but Nigerians have really taken over from them. Now, this needs to be clarified. This is not replicating advancing technology, or improving strides in medicine or stuff like that. It definitely isn’t that. What this type of imitation does is copy the things that are unimportant and in some cases, just plain wrong and stupid! It seems like copying became mainstream when Blackberry phones came into Nigeria. People were buying the phones like their lives depended on them. Some women were trading sex for a Blackberry. The movie ‘Blackberry Babes‘ seemed to show a clear picture of just how far women went in order to own the latest Blackberries. Men who couldn’t trade sex for a Blackberry were doing all manner of criminal deeds to earn money for them. As the phone gained more acceptance, the Blackberry Internet Services (BIS) subscription also followed suit; after all, what was a Blackberry without subscription? Telecommunication companies made it easier and easier by reducing the subscription fee until it became very affordable. Even at that, many people had to starve themselves to subscribe. Many women who were serious snobs all month, would suddenly become cute and cuddly when they run out of subscription or were about to run out of it. I remember in school when male friends used to lie to their parents to get money for handouts and upkeep, only to subscribe for BIS as soon as the money came in. Let us also not forget the parties that were done with certain Blackberries as the pass or ticket; today a Bold 2, tomorrow a Bold 4. It got to an all-time high when, on meeting someone, one of the first questions asked was, ‘What is your pin?’ Oh! Woe betides you that you say you didn’t have one; the look you would get could melt a lesser person. Where did the craze come from? And why did we feel the need to copy? The first time I heard about the Blackberry phones was in a fiction novel, one whose name I cannot remember now. In that book, the lead character had an everyday phone for personal contacts and a Blackberry for his business deals. My first view of the phone was a device that could help business people connect and transact business. When Nigerians copied the United States and some of Europe, it wasn’t to foster business deals but to oppress one another. This oppression was so much that Blackberry officially announced its Nigerian market as one of the most thriving markets in Africa. It must have enacted a lot of laughs among the top brass of the company when their Nigerian users were notably unhappy about the sale of the BBM app to android phones. In spite of the entire online petition by Nigerians to maintain the exclusivity, BBM was still introduced to android phones. This should have been a clear warning to us that copying doesn’t help us in anyway and it sure doesn’t give us the right to change corporate decisions. When the Apple products came into the country, the same frenzy was seen; only much worse. People could do all types of crazy stuff to own an iPhone, iPad or a MacBook. The craze is still on! Reflect back to when the iPhone 6 came out? Ha! Crazy stuff! Another glaring way our people copy things is shown in our art; from music videos to movies to our fashion and more. We have seen cases where music artists have copied already existing videos when making theirs. This is a case clearly shown in the ‘Skelewu’ video of music artist, Davido; the one directed by Moe Musa is the one I’m talking about. It was an obvious rip-off of the ‘Party Rock‘ video by LMFAO and the movie ‘28 Days Later‘. The question that comes to mind is, ‘Do foreign music artists copy stuff?‘ The answer is yes! But do they do this as blatantly as Nigerian artists do? I wouldn’t be so sure. The same trend is seen with Nigerian movies that are just poor replicas of Hollywood and Bollywood movies. This is especially sad because our talents are now being exported to the world. What message are we sending?! Other ways where copying stuff has been glaring are with social media, and most predominantly, Twitter. A while ago, #FollowFridays was the rave. Timelines were flooded with people who were all too eager to jump on the follow wagon. Then came the #FollowBack wagon and then #TwitFights. Like candy given to children, the twit fights became so popular. The fights ranged from amateur to downright mean and dirty and it even had some people permanently deleting their twitter accounts. Protesters demand a return of the Chibok Girls who were abducted from their school on April 14, 2014.Image: Ayiba Magazine All of this was good and dandy until the abduction of the girls from Chibok took place and became an international issue. Many Nigerians were as unconcerned about those girls, as the President was. When human rights agencies brought it up and began talking about it, social media imploded. That was when Nigerians showed an iota of care. As soon as people saw Americans, Asians, Europeans and even Arabs holding up placards with the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls, Nigerians began to care. Or should we say, Nigerians love a good trending topic to jump on and they got one. It wasn’t long before trendsetters (or more appropriately, trend followers) put up pictures of themselves wearing somber expressions while carrying placards with #BringBackOurGirls boldly written on it. It also was no surprise that as soon as the international media got bored with 240 missing African (and worse, Nigerian) girls, we also copied their apathy. We followed through by forgetting the girls because it just wasn’t trending anymore. This attitude told other countries two things: as a nation, we were not bothered with what happened
