‘What Buhari would have done to Burna Boy, if …’
Nigerian Afro-beat singer Damini Ebunoluwa Ogulu, better known as Burna Boy, has been criticised in an op-ed written by prolific columnist Tunde Odesola. The columnist, in the article titled, Marijuana: Burna Boy indicts Buhari, flayed the self-styled African giant and Grammy’s winner for glamourising the use of illicit substance in his songs.
Odesola, a constant critic of President Muhammadu Buhari, said Burna Boy would have incurred some consequences had he sung the same song during Buhari’s time as military head of state.
“In 1984 when the sway of Major General Muhammadu Buhari’s swagger stick typified military swiftness, a Port Harcourt-born young lad wouldn’t have metamorphosed from Damini Ebunoluwa Ogulu into Burna Boy, singing ‘I need igbo and shayo o’. Which studio would have recorded the offensive song?
“If Burna Boy missed being tied to a stake and flogged naked in the open by soldiers, he surely wouldn’t have missed doing the time for his crime at Kirikiri. He would have been banned from holding a mic in private or in public for 250 years!,” Odeola wrote.
TheCornet recounts Buhari and his deputy, Tunde Idiagbon’s iron-fist where war against drugs, public indiscipline and corruption were punishable by long jail sentencing. Many politicians in the Second Republic were jailed for corruptly enriching themselves.
The columnist also expressed his concerns about the erosion of good music in society. He said, “Now, singers don’t make music any more; they make noise. They have replaced rhythm with rubbish, they have replaced reason with rage, lyrics now drip only with sex, drugs plus alcohol and everyone in society – parents, guardians, government, clerics, schools, traditional rulers, unions – dances to the decay of our present and the doom of our future.”
Click to read Odesola’s full article, as published by PUNCH.
