Image Source: https://moacn.wordpress.com/2016/07/20/why-is-the-nigerian-music-industry-successful/?e_pi=7%2CPAGE_ID10%2C4267419777
What is being produced out of the self acclaimed biggest music industry in Africa is sickening to hear. Long gone are the days music serves to soothe the soul, calm the mind and ease pressure. Nigerian music I must say am afraid is failing in this regard. Music genres such as Apala, Juju, Highlife, Fuji are now relegated to the background with the exemption of Afrobeat. Legendary artistes like Ebenezer Obey, Onyeka Onwenu, Bongus Ikwe, King Sunny Ade, Victor Olaiya, Haruna Ishola, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, e.t.c. wrote and sang songs with many positive messages which entails great values, hope, love, joy, peace, tolerance and forgiveness though there are still some good music which please the ear but the negatives seem to be outnumbering them. Artistes of today even claimed to be inspired by these legends but what really went wrong?
The answer is not far fetched, the current trend where rythm has taken greater purpose over the lyrics that sell songs can be attributed to this decline in standard. When Fela said "music is the weapon for the future" he said this with hope but he never knew what kind of weapon it will turn out to be. The current state of the Nigerian music industry is never what he had in mind. Listen to songs like Science Student by Olamide which I believe promotes drugs even though he claims different. Oshozondi by Master T in which all Slimcase rapped about is only to hail some set of persons which people believed to be fraudsters. Fraudsters or not that's for EFCC to find out but why would an artiste hails supposed fraudsters in the first place. The appalling thing is hailing persons throughout a whole track seems to be the latest trend in the industry. This has been notably exhibited by Small Doctor, Junior Boy, QDot and even 9ice. Then there's this Shepeteri which lacks the even the minute of a sensible material expected from an artiste waiting for his big blow.
The issue of using women as sex object in music videos which is on the rise must also be stopped. The influence of foreign culture is not helping matters and this 'Yankee' influx into ours is contrasting. We are African and let's remain so, our culture and values must be embedded in us and protected. No matter how hard we try we can't be just be like them, we are not brought up that way. It's not everything one must learn and copy from other but maybe when one go to Rome then one can behave like a Roman.
All these have bad effects on the youth and children, it corrupt and pollute their minds. Virtually most youth engage themselves in fraudulent activities as that's what trending now. This can be attributed to vulgar lyrics like 'wire-wire', 'chache', e.t.c. mostly used nowadays by artistes which people mentality that getting rich by defrauding innocent people is the only way to go.
The regulatory bodies and media particularly the terrestrial TV station and online media still continue to broadcast and promote obscene videos. The government is to be blamed as they have done nothing on this. Even though the government is failing its citizens in almost everything we must not fail ourselves but fight against it and maybe music industry will help in this fight but first let's save this industry before it gets out of hands.
