The Nigerian entertainment industry achieved a great feat and made history in 2021 when Damini Ogulu aka Burna Boy won a Grammy Award, which the great icon, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, was nominated for several times and didn't win. That is, indeed, a great, magnificent and a glorious achievement for the music industry in the whole of Africa.

Music in Nigeria too has been politicised by unscrupulous elements that want to feed off the sweat of the young ones coming up, trying to make impact with their crafts. The demand for bringing something “before I can help you push your music to a certain limit” has pushed humongous number of artists into depression.

At least, speaking from the experience of a friend who entrusted his faith and hope in a certain music promoter at Alaba International Market in Lagos State, where he was plainly duped of his hard-earned money, hoping his music would be distributed by the so-called, self-acclaimed promoter, to make him “blow.” In Nigeria, when an artist makes it big in the music industry, they say usually that “he don blow.” That is used to describe the context of making it, which shows or portrays the success of such artist. Alaba international market is the hallmark of music and movie business, ranging from production to distribution and circulation, locally and also globally. My friend got scammed till today; we never saw or heard where they played his song or even got a call from someone in other parts of Nigeria saying they heard him somewhere.

That is the danger of “bring small thing so I can help you rise,” when there are actually genuine promoters that would actually lift them up without collecting a dime; although with a contractual agreement to avoid any future breaches. The polluted element in the entertainment industry is not only segmented to the music industry alone. There are same bad eggs in the movie section (Nollywood), where producers and directors want to copulate with the female folks, just to nip a role in one of their movies. We know these gibberish acts won’t stop any time soon, because of the wrong foundation laid many years ago.

This is just like when politics is talked about and corruption will definitely be mentioned, because they are interwoven when it comes to the Nigerian settings. If the producers cannot sleep with the ladies to help them rise to stardom, they demand huge sum of money. The same thing applies to their male counterparts; they demand huge amounts before they are fixated in a meaningless or passersby role, after the corrupt ones have taken forcefully from those gullible and desperate actors and actresses they feature in those movies for just two minutes, professionally or unprofessionally. No one checkmates this; that is why we have so many quack and unqualified artists on our television screens today.

A story was told that made the headlines for days on a social media app, Instagram to be precise, where a lady spoke about paying a certain man more than N12 million, to get on a reality show like the Big Brother Naija. She claimed to be an upcoming actress; and, according to her, she got nothing and nothing good ever came out of the show; that the organiser of the same show collected from other gullible people. That is how pathetically sad our entertainment industry has been generally polluted.

A total reformation, restructuring and reorganisation is key to the permanent transformation the entertainment industry can get, by regulating the necessary agency by the appointment of credible stakeholders to mount the helms of affair in their various posts or positions and inform notable investors by orientation of how the entertainment industry can compete with the world industry.

I believe, one day, the Nigerian entertainment scene shall get to the Promised Land.

•Mike-Nifty, a public affairs analyst and a curator, e-mail: nifty.mics@yahoo.com.

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