Nigerian entertainment has a publicist problem. It really isn’t too much to expect that when a ‘celebrity’ attains a certain level of fame, the people profiting off him/her find a manager to ensure they don’t go around running their mouths and exposing themselves as crude and uneducated and misogynistic. But well, we’re in Nigeria and what we get is Kiss Daniel.

The talented singer (yes, it’s always the talented ones, the talentless ones are too busy wallowing in obscurity) put out a critically acclaimed album that was basically a greatest hits medley of love songs dedicated to women; to mothers, mother-in-laws, daughters, girlfriends and exes. He did them all. So when his most recent interview with the Punch Magazine surfaced on the internet, a few quotes set my synapses firing.

“I like ambitious women who are intelligent, can think for themselves and envisage the future.
There are some women that can tell you a lot of ways to properly spend and invest N10m and you would be amazed.
That is the type of lady I want, a woman who can drown you in her thoughts.

I don’t want the type of woman that would only think about how to twerk and spend your money.

I like twerking and I’m not saying it’s bad but when it comes to choosing the woman I would live with for the rest of my life, I think intelligence is more important.

There will come a time when ladies would not be able to twerk again because of old age.”

You can read the rest of it here if you care.

2017 folks, this is happening in 2017. Kiss Daniel has women twerking in his music videos, has women twerking when he performs on stage, uses their sexuality to sell his pleasant sounding but unoriginal music, and then goes on to bash them the very first time someone is stupid enough to put him in front of a journalist. I am not surprised but I am disappointed, and I’m growing tired of being constantly disappointed by Nigerian men.

Respectability politics, a.k.a. I like women who twerk but I will only marry a good woman, suggests that women cannot be a multiplicity of things; women who twerk cannot be god-fearing, virgins cannot be sex positive, and so on. It is tired, played out excuse for discriminating against women and perpetuating sexism. I don’t know if Kiss Daniel can be saved or educated, and personally I can’t be bothered, but please, for all that is holy, keep him and all our ‘twerk in my videos’ ‘musicians’ away from the media, news and print. We’re already having a  hard enough fight as it is, without having to educate hare-brained jollof musicians.

Editor