By Jude Ndukwe
The Muslim Rights Concern, MURIC,has issued a 7-day ultimatum to Folarin
‘Falz’ Falana to apologise to Muslimsand withdraw his trending video,
“This is Nigeria”, over what the group termed“insensitive, thoughtless and
highly provocative” scenes.
The group also claimed that “Thevideo manifests ethnic bias against
Fulanis while it ignored the criminalactivities of ethnic militia of the
Middle Belt who have also massacred Fulanisand rustled their cattle in
their thousands”.
“Itis a hate video. This video has the potential of causing religious
crisis ofunprecedented dimension. It is an assault on the self-dignity of
every Muslim.It is freedom of expression gone haywire”, MURIC further
stated.
Really?
Itis very obvious that those who crafted that ultimatum to Falz do not
understandwhat a work of art like the video in question represents both in
content and inform. Apart from its entertainment value which is derived
from its form, art isnothing but the imitation or the reflection of a
society. Truth be told, thereis nothing in that video that should offend
anyone who is deeply and trulytouched by the nauseating level of
socio-political decadence driving our nationto the precipice which are
most times perpetrated and perpetuated under the guiseof religion.
Ifcrafters of that ultimatum understood what art is, they would not even
take theexplanations of Falz for anything, they would rather seek an
independent anddispassionate interpretations of the musical video in a
manner which can beuseful to them and others in the correction of our
societal ills rather thandissipate scarce energy on a beautiful work of
art. This is because in art, itis believed that “the author is ‘dead’” and
so has no explanations to makeabout his work but leaves it to the
dissection of its users.
Forexample, some have interpreted part of the song which says “everybody
be criminal” to mean that Falz is referring to allNigerians as criminals.
But far from it, in another view, it could be that whathe is saying by
that line is that not everyone who lives a fairly comfortablelifestyle
made his riches through fraudulent means.
This could be his way ofbalancing critical issues raised in the song
because “We operate a predatoryneo-colonialism capitalist system which is
founded on fraud and exploitationand therefore we are bound to have
corruption…”
So he says, “This is Nigeriawhere because I’m on TV now, person wey no get
work is checking to see if mywatch is original”. In other words, even if
his wristwatch is “original”, heworked for it through his music that has
put him on TV and gave an undeclaredbut implied advice to such a person to
go find him/herself a job as it is noteveryone with an “original”
wristwatch that participates in the “fraud andexploitation” going on in
the country even though such people think “everybody be criminal”.
So rather than interpret the songfrom the parochial premise of an attack
on a particular religion, respectablebodies like MURIC should download the
video on multiple devices as may belegally permissible and distribute to
millions of their members to study andcome up with ways Nigeria can tackle
the many socio-political and economic illsthat are the crux of the message
in Falz’s musical video.
It is becoming too monotonous andineffective for MURIC and such other
bodies to keep issuing threats wheneverthe reality of the ills of religion
is exposed either in speech, writing, songor movie. After all, Falz also
indicted the Christian faith in his wellchoreographed interpretation of
the sad situation the country is in. Christianswill not be caught issuing
threats because humility as a cardinal virtue oftheir religion requires
that they rather look inward and correct the ills stillexisting among them
than fight those who expose them.
It is therefore the height ofhypocrisy for MURIC to threaten the young
musical star for using images ofgirls in hijab dancing “shaku shaku” as if
there are no hijab-wearing girlsprostituting audaciously particularly in
Abuja and other places. MURIC shoulddeploy its resources, since it has so
much to sue Falz, to convincing suchhijab-wearing prostitutes to abandon
their adverse social life, get themrehabilitated and reintegrated into
society.
Once again, since art is not andcannot be limited to one particular
interpretation, I make bold to say that itis such sad realities that Falz
tries to depict in his video. Since art is amirror of the society, no one
can blame any artist/artiste for speaking tosociety using the realities in
the same society no matter who or which group isinvolved. Not doing so
would amount to a corrupt reproduction of reality. Thisis why in a
literature class, the interpretation of a book can be as diverse asall the
students studying the book, yet, they could all be correct.
It would be a total waste of timeand resources to take Falz to court for
depicting “a character that dressedlike a Fulani man, who suddenly
abandoned his traditional guitar and beheaded aman”. The simple evidence
Falz would need to present in court that he did notmake up the scene to
denigrate or ridicule any particular religion or ethnicgroup but only
reflecting the realities of our society would be to just presenta plethora
of newspaper reports of killings carried out by Fulani herdsmenterrorists
and official statements from government functionaries at all
levelsconcerning the killings, videos of claims of responsibility for the
manykillings by groups of Fulani extraction etc, and MURIC would be forced
to runback home with its tail between its legs.
In other works, even the policeand the judiciary have been subjects of
painful but truthful expose on thecorruption that goes on among their
respective professions. If the police decideto arrest every artiste or
movie maker that depict that some of them arecorrupt and if the judiciary
decides to jail everyone who produces a work ofart that depicts some
negative developments in their field, we certainly willnot have the
entertainment industry which is Nigeria’s new crude oil if wellharnessed
rather than being well harassed.
In conclusion, while the videocontinues to enjoy acceptability worldwide,
let political and religious leadersin every part of the country descend
from their hypocritical political highhorse, take their lessons from the
rich video and work out ways of taking ourcountry back to her days of
glory. This, I think, is Falz’s message.
—jrndukwe@yahoo.co.uk;