Written By Oyez
Recently, new words were added to the Oxford English Dictionary and an unprecedented 29 of those words were of Nigerian origin, what we call Pidgin or Broken English. Words like “ember months”, “next tomorrow” and “barbing salon” were part of the addition.
With the way things are going on social media, the Dictionary should brace itself to accept more new words, change the meaning of some and review the synonym and antonym section for most. Your guess is as good as right; the etymology for these new additions would still be Nigeria, Twitter NG chapter.
These days, “Good” means “Lame” and “Lame” that used to mean “Cripple” now means “Not good enough”. Invariably, “Good” now means “Not good enough”. On the other hand, if you want to express how exceptional someone is at what they do, you say “That guy is bad!”
Is there a conspired attempt to bridge the divide and blur the lines between good and evil? Are the media, entertainment industry and the internet part of this grand scheme?
At the turn of the millennium, R. Kelly released a song titled Bad Man, soundtrack to the movie Shaft starring Samuel L. Jackson. The song chronicles the everyday life of someone raised in the streets, paid his dues and is now some sort of area father. He packaged being bad and made it feel so good that every young man wanted to be called“Bad Boy”. Enter the movie Bad Boys starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence; from the title, you would mistake them for gangsters, whereas they were actually the good guys, the cops catching the bad guys. Then there was theRap/Hip-hop record label known as Bad Boys Entertainment which featured rappers like Puff Daddy (now Diddy), Notorious BIG, Mase et al. More recently, we had Rihanna, who was proud to name her third album Good Girl Gone Bad. That was the genesis of how being bad became a worthy ambition of the youth race.
Let’s bring it back home. Our musicians here have managed to change the comparative and superlative versions of “Bad” from “Bad-Worse-Worst” to “Bahd-Baddo-Baddest” as portrayed in a hit song of the same title by Nigerian artistes Falz (The Bahd Guy), Olamide (Baddo) and Davido (Baddest). To make matters fancier, “Bad” has been funky-fied in spelling to “Badt” or “Bahd”. In that vein, if you see someone spell “Madt” , it’s not a typo for “Mad”, it just means something exceptionally special has occurred. I can envisage a reader saying “Mad ooo…” to that.
There are two issues here. One; we are observing how the media/entertainment and the internet are influencing language and culture. Two; that a word can now mean the opposite of itself and the synonym of its antonym. Hold these issues dearly to heart as you think about the next generation.
If you were coming across the word “Marlian” for the first time, no one would tease you if you thought it was a movement to honour the late reggae icon Bob Nesta Marley and his conscious music. It makes sense, right? But no, you would be very wrong because “Marlians” refers to the proud-to-be-called manner-less, pants-sagging, weed-smoking, panty-less, rules-defying, no respect for constituted authority, internet fraud promoting, lewd-singing followers of Nigerian musician AzeezAdeshinaFashola, popularly known as Naira Marley. Don’t for a second assume that they would get offended by all my name-calling, not at all, they wear these titles as a badge of honor.
The vocally impaired artiste grew to prominence when he did a song titled “Am I A Yahoo Boy?” subtly promoting internet fraud, AKA “Yahoo Yahoo”. It’s not like he is the first to promote this crime in a song, the likes of Olu Maintain, D’Banj, 9ice, Olamide and the likes have contributed to this. For direct or indirect reasons, Naira Marley was picked up by the authorities for alleged involvement in the some fraudulent activities, spent some weeks in jail and that was how his notoriety grew. He got public support from some fellow musicians and fans and as the days went by with him being locked up, his fan-base grew like a church that has moved to herpermanent site. The solidarity of his teeming followers over the internet gave birth and christening to what we now know as “Marlians”, an unregistered body without a corporate office whose slogan and hashtag is “#NoMannaz”. Why do they need to be registered or have a headquarters anyway when they are supposed to not obey any rules?
After being granted bail, he was welcomed massively by his self-acclaimed movement and the first thing he did was to release another single titled “Soapy”, another bold attempt at promoting what most young people do but no one wants to talk about, Masturbation. The song was inspired by his time in jail and even has its own dance moves. Now if you go on the comment section of most online forums in Nigeria, you would be shocked to see youths proudly call themselves “The Vaseline Crew”. Do I have to spell out what that means? I don’t even want to delve into the ones who sing to glorify drug addiction by calling junkies “Science Students”.
Did you read the story about the woman, who after a young boy was arrested on her street, in solidarity, she protested to the police by yelling, “Na yahoo you be, you no kill person!”
Should we now advise the police to ignore people when they misbehave so as not to give them cheap popularity and somehow turn them into overnightheroes and heroines? Which one does Bobriski fall into sef? “She-roine”?
My bad. Oops, I meant to say “my good”. You see, I don’t even know which term is appropriate, “good” or “bad”.
After all, written and read, if you promote moral decadence, justify cybercrimes, celebrate drug abuse, or merely joke about with these pressing issues harming our society, accept it, you are a Marlian!