YNaija Editorial: The Voice was not the enemy, Nigeria is

Word on the street is that a not-so-ideal person emerged the winner of the just concluded music TV reality show, The Voice Nigeria 2017. A Daniel Diongoli, popularly known as Idyl was announced as the winner of the sophomore season of a show which had a first season that seemed to have put the voice back in the top criteria for winning music-based reality shows in Nigeria – no pun intended there seeing how the show’s infamous logo could easily be read as a deuces/mic drop sign intended for all the other shows that had come before it.

“Is Idyl good, yes
Is Idyl better than Precious, no
Is he better than Jahtell, no 
But congrats to him tho 

That’s one of the many responses from unsatisfied viewers from across the country. Of course, there had been complaints raised about the downward spiral in the quality of talents and feedback on the show since the first season but there was some level of expectation that the show was going to make up for the slack by the finals but then things got rushed, the song choices and the voices singing them did not get any better and now, we’ve ended up with another winner (of votes) who did not quite get the popular votes.

But The Voice is not the enemy here. Sure, its showrunners need to find their funk and get it together on all fronts before the next season of the show or risk bringing down the superb reputation of other countries have built for The Voice over the years (we know better than to think they’ll be at risk of losing viewership over it. Nigerians, after all, will watch anything) but the truth is that this is just a sonorous (or not) metaphor for how things work here in Nigeria.

Let’s start from how we are masters of importing great ideas, business models, modes of governance, cars, anything without considering how it’ll work or we can rework it to fit our own particular circumstances here in Nigeria. The Voice, as an international reality talent hunt franchise, has travelled through over 60 countries and regions in the 7 years of its existence and it has become best known as the alternative to many of the others in its league who use very similar formats to choose the best singing talent. Two years, in Nigeria and that same show is already racking up a reputation as just another rigged show. How very Nigerian isn’t it?

We can tolerate Idyl winning. Not Ebube I’m sorry.

That’s another one of the complaints we found on Twitter last night. Left with a choice between Idyl and Ebube, Nigerians began to play the “we’ve been left with no choice” card. Of course, it made sense to many to make the better choice between the devil and the red sea but that’s where this leads to the second point: the very Nigerianess of having been given two bad choices by the “cabals” or at least claiming that’s the case.

But then as we already said, The Voice is not the enemy here. The Voice Nigeria is just the latest reminder of the mediocrity that runs through the fabric of the Nigerian society. And sadly, we cannot wait to see how once again, nothing important will come out of this.

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