We are what we consume

I have written elsewhere about how irritating I find these lyrics that celebrate wealth (and do it without context) so that money is what is being lauded and not the how of it. When we decontextualise wealth, then all wealth is the same. Hard work, diligence mean nothing if the end product isn’t fabulous wealth. And fabulous wealth on its own is enough. The end justifies the means is the message, and see where it’s got us: folks wanting to make money at all costs. 

Just yesterday, a friend WhatsApped me a clip of four young men between 17 and 19 who’d been apprehended for a crime and who –  in the video –  identified as members of “Unknown Gun Men” (an irony that’s so obvious I won’t even joke about it). Their greed doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It is a consequence of many things, one of which is a society that is so steeped in materialism that it’s become an anomaly to be wealthy but not be flagrantly so in your spending. Shebi recently someone spent time and talent and energy to make a video mocking Peter Obi for his frugality with his personal wealth? Odikwa egwu!   

And before someone misquotes me, let me clarify: money isn’t a bad thing. We need it to survive, to do good, to enjoy this world we’ve been given. It’s the love of it that is bad, and that is what’s said to be at the root of all evil. Kidnapping for ransom; corruption; bad government; bribery etc are built on the foundation of a love of money. Love of money – like all loves- demands attention and constant feeding.  It is a cruel god. That policeman that shot at a family coming back from church (killing the wife and maiming the husband) in Lagos a few years ago for not giving him enough money, did it for the love of money. It’s a greedy god, insatiable so that it’s never enough. The more you have of it, the more you want. It overwhelms everything else so that its acolyte  does whatever they can to amass more of it. A leader who loves money impoverishes his people to buy 25 homes when he can only live in one at a time. I remember some years ago, a house in Abuja was pointed out to me as belonging to one of our now deceased heads of states. House had been empty since the guy died, and was only one of his many homes.  

I’m not dumping on wealthy people or even on Stanley Okorie’s compellingly danceable hit. However, when I see women – particularly young women who still live at home with their parents, young women who ought to be looking up to better role models, who ought to be thinking of how to make their own living in the future – making and posting these videos of themselves dancing giddily to the song and waving bundles of cash around, something in me dies a little.  Maybe because it feels to me that they are getting this message, and it isn’t one that they should be getting.  

I don’t know Okorie, I don’t know whether or not he approves of the way his song is being used, I don’t know that he even thinks about it (or that he should) he’s just tapping into the zeitgeist of this generation: money, money, money. He’s not the first, won’t be the last and perhaps it’s not just this generation, or peculiarly Nigerian even. After all, Abba did it in 1976. We’ve always been fascinated by folks who have lots of money, by folks who live differently from us, by the glitz and glamour of their lives. We wonder what that must be like, and all that is well and good. What isn’t well and good is when that fascination becomes an obsession, a desire to get that money regardless of what one has to sacrifice (or force others to). 

Go and secure that bag. Secure as many bags as you want to, but do not fall head over heels for money. It’s not a worthy lover.  

By the way, Okorie’s song has become an earworm I can’t get rid of.