FAREWELL MCQUEEN

BY WANA UDOBANG
Once upon a time glamazons ruled the catwalk, with their Miami Vice style blazers and stomach length jeans. Runways in London
New York, Paris and Milan were clad in solid blocks of pastel colours along with shoulder pads and elaborate buttons. Just as fashion was about to experience a black hole, then came a young man. His name, Lee Alexander McQueen. Unbeknown to fashion, he would revolutionise its world in all its grandeur and entirety.
McQueen brought something dynamic to the fashion world stage. His shows were theatrical, they were grand, they were a circus, some might even go as far as saying it was a freak show. Essentially in the world of clothing design, McQueen gave the world something to talk about. He became the zeitgeist in the fashion game. Always daring to be different. He created the “Bumsters”, which ultimately spun the trend for the low rise jeans. He also birthed the scarf engraved with the motif of skulls draped on most celebrities and replicated across the globe. In his 1998 Autumn show, he featured double amputee model Aimee Mullens striding down the catwalk on intricately carved wooden legs. With an innately rebellious streak, he was never shy of controversy.
Although he didn’t come from a typical fashion pedigree, his accent to the fashion Oligarch is something that can be attributed to his taste for design, shock factor and sometimes the macabre. McQueen’s clothes have an air of craft and architecture to it, because somewhere along his career, his designs had surpassed pattern cutting and tailoring to become clothing architecture. His works have been more fascinating than Haute Couture. His days as an apprentice on Saville Row always came in handy as it could be traced in his impeccably tailored jackets. His sense of the ghoulish never went without a stare. One could see it in the celebrities attracted to his pieces of fashion iconography. Icelandic princess Bjork, Lady Gaga and Rhianna are just a few of his patrons. While Alexander McQueen was becoming the renaissance man for the Avant Garde , subliminally he was reconstructing fashion’s design history. He was doing what Film Noir had done to the world of cinema. Fashion wasn’t just frivolous anymore. It wasn’t just hemming together yarns of fabric or looking pretty in an outfit. This Scottish taxi drivers son had made clothing become art. Like Warhole and Damian Hirst he was crowd the l’enfant terrible(terrible child) of the fashion world.



McQueen’s clothes were sometimes unwearable and at other times difficult to adapt for high street fashion. He had also been criticised for going overboard. Despite all the criticism, he never compromised his fashion principles.
Alexander McQueen was a working class boy who grew up on a council estate in London’s east end. After leaving school with one O Level in art, he served his apprenticeship in London’s tailoring Mecca, Saville Row.
He would later apply to the prestigious Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design for the role of a pattern cutter tutor. But due to his very strong working portfolio, he was persuaded to enrol as a student and McQueen later graduated with a Masters in fashion design. McQueen served as head designer to Givenchy for five years before starting his own clothing line. Even he once admitted he had to tone down his love for the dramatic whilst working for Givenchy. He won the coveted award for British designer of the year four times and eventually awarded a CBE by the queen
Whilst Donna Karen was going through a spirituality overhaul and presenting boring pieces of loincloth on the runway (a total disappointment of course),Jean-Paul Gaultier had lost his sense of the bizarre(the cone bra worn by Madonna became his last memorable piece). But McQueen always kept in line with his vision of drama and extravagance. The McQueen woman was strong; she was a rebel, unafraid, and never shy of making a strong statement. That was Alex’s girl. That was the McQueen aesthetic
On the 11th of February 2010, Lee Alexander McQueen was found dead in his home just nine days after his own mother’s death and a couple of days to London fashion week. A British tabloid paper reported that his body was found hanged.
. As we mourn the loss this fashion demagogue, we ask who can take his place. Even Vivian Westwood had abdicated the throne as the queen of rebellious youth and teenage angst fashion, who could rule the runways again? Is fashion about to experience another black hole?
As the saying goes, “the world is a stage, we all have our entrances and our exits” McQueen left a bit early, but he waltzed of the runway with a standing ovation.

WHEN WILL I GET MARRIED

wana udobang

In the city of Lagos, being over twenty years old, a female and showing no prospects of an impending marriage ceremony is unacceptable. Like me if you have hit the twenties mid point, and there are still no signs of a recurring name in your conversations of the male specie of course, then you have become a cause for a state of emergency.
My friend is a writer, a bit of a hippy too and still has grand dreams to write her first non-Nollywood screenplay and maybe one day lace her dreads with cowries, wearing a long gypsy skirt and touring film festivals around the world. Now it seems a bit “Thomas Moore’s Utopia” but here is the twist. She has just hit the big three zero. That time in your life where you are told that your younger sisters cannot get married before you. When you are asked questions like “what is wrong with you...why are you being very picky. Just choose one and train him. No body is perfect..need i remind you men are scarce in Lagos” . In some instances there are the accusations of being a lesbian and constant references to the fact that your eggs are about to attain shrivelling status before they fry and become completely futile. I always thought there was a process though, you met someone, dated, got into a serious relationship, along the way discover if the forever after would be right for both of you or not.
Again like me if you are of the wasted youth generation, who spent years being overly serious and overly responsible accompanied by unnesesary insecurity and self loathing, consequently realising that the world had passed through you instead of the other way round. Self actualisation somewhat threatens you slapping you on the face with statements like “there is an unexplored world right in front of you” and this time round you aren’t just ready to let it pass you by a second time.
Marriage is a beautiful thing they say. Finding love and companionship for the rest of your life. Never having to go to the cinema alone pretending that you are meeting a friend there. Saying goodbye to those sad drunken girls nights out where you bitch about men and surveying every club hoping desperately that someone might be checking you out. At least that way the outfit and bleeding toes weren’t in vein. Waving goodbye to the life of unavailable men. Bidding adieu to those hopes of getting picked because finally you are number one. No more booty calls or creature of emotional escapism because you are number ONE and you get his last name to prove it.
Marriage is also mortgages, savings, investments, acquiring assets, children, school fees, summer camps, family vacation, business loans, health insurance being responsible, being a provider, leading or supporting the clan, and in Nigeria domestic staff, driver, laundry man and security . Not saying there is anything wrong with this but when do I get to travel on a bus around west Africa and write my book about the Griots. When do I get to wake up and shoot my photo essay on the lives of the Tuaregs for three months. When do i quit my job to start my business and learn a second language. When do i go back packing as part of my artistic odyssey. As a somewhat professional fantasist, yes i accept my plans do go a bit overboard. All one is saying is that sometimes it might just be a bit selfish to get hitched for culture sake when you have a truckload of unfulfilled plans. Yes!!!! i know you can still achieve everything you want when you find the right one. But still, can one just wake up, quit your well paying nine to five, pick up a hobby and still be married?
Despite my rant, ask me again in a year or two, when i start using products consisting of names like hypo- dermabrasion kit, glycolic peels and Retanin in a dire attempt to reverse the black on my face from cracking. I might just start singing like a canary. Telling you about my high flying job in corporate communications and my own pending nuptials too. Anything just to save the poor eggs and fulfil my purpose of procreation to my culture and mankind. If you haven’t caved in just yet, a night vigil dedicated solely to your singleton status may just be in order. hopefully someone is still going to want to annoint me with that pearl ring after saying all this.

NEW AGE GROUPIES

by WANA UDOBANG
I was privileged to be an attendee at a recent celebrity wedding and im sure you know that weddings happen to be the ultimate net-worker’s haven. If you aren’t scouting for a potential spouse, then you have to make those vital industry contacts. I was introduced by a friend to another attendee. Industry introductions are a little different from the norm. You are introduced by your name, accompanied with what you do. Infact the introduction is not only accompanied with what you do, but how high you are on the Richter scale of power. Sometimes it feels like a Forbes one hundred list of the most influential people in the entertainment business. Then there is this over eagerness to exchange numbers.
Going back to the introductions, this other guy was introduced to me as the publicist to a very well known crooner. So after the casual smile, forced small talk and swap of digits, I turn back to my friend and then I ask in bemusement, “ I thought L was handling the crooners public relations”. Then my friend proceeds on a tutorial of what has now been coined “ the new age groupies”. He proceeds to explain to me that all these people work for free. They are neither hired nor poached. The dream is that eventually, when the brand blows beneath the stratosphere, they will reap their reward and hopefully get a mention during the Grammy speeches. In these cases though, they will just have to settle for MTV and Channel O awards. Further into the tutorial, he broke down the different categories. There is management, within that there are even different strata of managers. There are the producers, the radio promotions people, the online promotions and marketing people, the print promotions people who tend to be magazine columnists usually. There are the facebook hype people, the hook singers, the graphic designers for the proposed album covers, the video director, the logistics guy, the personal assistant, the diary managers, the logistics people, the party planners, the Tee shirt printers and less I forget, the stylist slash wannabe designer, whom I would usually refer to as the clothing assembler.
“babe, its keying into the brand, for a lack of a better phrase to think of” that was what my friend told me.
Then it dawned on me, even I was one too. I pondered for a little while, and then assessed some of my previous activities. I had engaged in prostituting myself as fans of their work on facebook with hype status updates, written features about them on blogs, stalked them for interviews, in the end telling myself I was promoting and lending my support to good works of art. I had made comments on facebook walls, on how I had given airplay to some of the most underground songs of these artists before they started to smell an iota of public recognition. I was nothing less than a new age groupie, but just a groupie with a day job.
My friend later told me about a mutual colleague of ours who was a groupie too. Apparently he told my friend that once the star gets bigger, the phone calls decline gradually before they finally stop. Gone are the days when they call you to listen to a track when it’s still being mixed on multi-track, all in a bid for your audible expertise. Slowly you become useless and those dreams of hearing your name in the award show thank you accolades start to wither. Like a pest infested plant, just before they die. The dream you assisted in constructing leaves you with a bullet lodged in your spine. Just imagine a drive by in broad daylight.
Somewhere deep down, I knew how he felt. It was like when the spice girls sacked Simon Fuller. Or when Rolling Stones Mick Jagger dumped Marianne Faithful( She became a heroine addict and later managed to carve out a singing career eventually then later had cancer from supposedly smoking three packets of cigarettes a day)
At least in Fullers case, he was able to conceive the “Idols” franchise which became the blueprint for all song and dance contests around the globe.
But not every abandoned groupie becomes as successful as Fuller. Some will eventually give it all up to return to the world of nine to five, and some start to take advantage of desperate fame hungry seekers. For a fee, they will sleep on facebook on your behalf all day, while others just name drop and tell stories of how they all used to share a bedroom in the ghetto when they were still nobodies.
None the less, some groupies become entities on their own. They spam you with press releases till you have no choice but to recognise their clients. So there you have it, groupies come in all shapes, sizes and vocations too.

FATTY GIRLS CLUB

by WANA UDOBANG
Fashion is brutal. That’s what they will tell you. Like Heidi Klum says in project runway, “One minute you’re in and the next your out”. Suck your stomach in and button those jeans, wear those shoes even if your toes bleed. Its fashion, it’s hot but its got to hurt.
But for some of us, our butts can barely get into it. Let’s not talk of looking hot in it.
I recently scored a gig as the co-host on a make-over and stylish television show and for me it was off to the shops to hunt down some outfits to film what might sooner or later be referred to as my big break.
Here the silent drama ensued. We walked into one of those overpriced Victoria Island stores. After trying on a few calico (Tehru) made outfits and finally convincing them that it wouldn’t fit, much to my embarrassment, we all gave up. As a UK size twenty, with a cup size that equates to the seventh letter of the English alphabet plus complementary hips thereabouts in the width of fifty inches, I had given up on being any designers muse a very long time ago.
So the likelihood of finding any piece of fashionable iconography to pass my shoulders(décolletage as the Hollywood stylistics call it) in Nigeria is next to nothing. Then I heard the designer lady over the phone asking her suppliers if it was possible to get some designs in a larger size. Somewhere deep down I started to believe the fashion deities where about to have mercy on my chicken and ice cream sins. For a split second, I envisioned a miracle.
I had seen a really nice empire waist dress with the chest area constructed out of patchwork Ankara fabric and the bottom half just a layer of floor length flowing chiffon. The belt would singe my waist in, and the gathered chiffon would drape right over my Michelin belly. I would look fabulous in that dress I thought.
Then I asked, “Is it possible to get this in my size? Its not for the show, I will be paying for this”. Forgive my shylock fingers but I couldn’t help but feel a bit guilty for the thought that I was actually considering purchasing “patch patch” Ankara for over a hundred pounds.(sadly I still calculate from Naira to Pounds to digest how much im being robbed). Then she replied “im sorry this stops at a size sixteen, making it in a bigger size would be stress for me. It means fitting and re-fitting which for me is a lot of stress”. I gasped beneath my breath and my eyes glided across the room, only to be met with a synchronised stare from my director friend Ododo. I thought I was the only one who realised what she had just said until I could read Ododo’s thoughts in her pupils. Telepathically I was receiving her words. My friend was saying “you know you are on full hungry (hustling) and you are not a star yet. When we finish filming this season, you will have small money to be on full gym (excersice), then you will loose some of this your breast and buy the whole shop”. Ododo had a special way of constructing sentences and sadly I had become a huge follower of her lexicon.



A few days ago, I was approached by one of my neighbours who said she was starting a plus size club and she already had over a hundred members. They would be having their meeting over the weekend and she wanted to know if I would be willing to join. She told me about one of her members who lamented about trying to buy an outfit and the designer said she would ruin the figure of the dress. Actually what the designer said was “you will spoil the shape of the dress”. I was still very caught up in trying to foresee what kind of conversations took place at the plus size girls club. I reckoned it would start of like a narcotics anonymous meeting, followed by lamentations of being ostracised by the fashion world. But nothing less could be expected to close the meetings but therapy sessions on positive reinforcement and self acceptance. As I write this, I receive a text invitation to my first fatty girls meeting holding at the Silverbird Gallaria. I wondered what if the Forever Living weight loss merchandisers attacked the fatty girls club with leaflets and purging tablets. I had been a victim of forever living marketers. They were ferocious at it. I remember a lady searching aggressively through a bin for a product prescription leaflet which she thought would help me tremendously. You would think I asked her for it, meanwhile all I came there to do was check my email. They had accosted me at the bank once, and then at the amusement park in Abuja, then there was the herbalist who held a bottle of shrub stems and sap pointing at my tummy then patting his as he repeated the words “go down go down” .As I had to entertain my city over the airwaves on a Sunday, I was unable to attend the fat girls pity party.

We were under a very tight time schedule for production, thus unable to tour all the plus size boutiques in Lagos. Two stores down, so many ugly lycra and jersey dresses later, we were left with no option but my personal wardrobe. Hopefully as Ododo says, I will be on full celeb very soon and I can say goodbye to fat girl meetings, constricted designer wears and maybe just buy myself a designer instead.

THE DECAY OF MY CONCIOUS FIBRE

BY WANA UDOBANG
A friend once came to visit me and said, “You are one of those black people”. Unconsciously I retreated into an internal monologue, “sorry to disappoint you but true”. You see I am one of those black people. The ones that buy Fela and Oumou Sangare records, which hang Dadaist collages of black empowerment and mental emancipation on their walls, the ones that join the band wagon of save the children campaigners hoping I could contribute something to our ever so rapidly decaying world. The ones that tattoo self affirming messages on their wrists; Yes I am one of those black people. Those black people that grow afros in a bid to prove that they will not be a part of the machine, until I realised that even an overdose of painkillers couldn’t numb the excruciating pain that came with trying to tame the natural goods that the most high had bestowed upon me. Who said Madam CJ Walker didn’t know when she invented the perm kit.

When I became a journalist, I thought it would be like it said in the books. I thought I would epitomise the fourth estate, become the mouthpiece between the feudal powers and the proletarian masses. My mother had dreams of her last child becoming the next Amanpour. She still talks about Christianne like she had lunch with her just the day before. I was already on my way to becoming an award winning documentary filmmaker, just after I would have obtained a distinction in my futuristic masters degree in documentary film from the London Film and Television School or even Goldsmith University(Home to some of the most avant-garde Brits in the world). It would sit very nicely just next to my first class degree from a premier European arts institution. It will be sweet in the mouth, just the way Nigerians say it. I would re-incarnate Micheal Winterbottom’s eye and merge it with a certain kind of Nick Bloomfield curiosity. I would become a national conscious treasure and my people would be proud.

I was still mastering the art of documentary radio, making moving pieces of sound art and features that would move any suicide bomber to tears.
I made pieces of campaign journalism. I was told that I was way beyond my years; I knew how to hit the core of the human psyche. My ambition was to re-ignite the public interest debate. I religiously studied the “Unreported World”. I would have given anything to become a concoction of Sourious Samura and Hunter .S. Thompson. I would go Gonzo in pursuit of the truth. Then something happened.

I got a commission to make a feature for BBC Radio Four. It was for a daily programme called Woman’s hour. Dare I say, “The home of intelligent speech and drama”. Woman’s Hour was what it was, an hour long daily programme about women. I had pitched an idea to them about the indecent dressing bill in Nigeria which certain people in power had been trying to pass as a piece of legislation. I did also mention that the proposed bill was spearheaded by a woman in charge of women and youth affairs for the federal republic. Of course this was the sort of thing that Woman’s hour would love to sink their teeth into. Then I came to Nigeria on assignment. (As a freelancer, such travel expenses were unpaid for). It was about the cause and maybe the CV too.

A few interviews and atmospheric sounds later, there was still one missing piece. The interview from the senator Grande Dame, Madame Ufot Ekaete. Thankfully the different strands of the BBC were at peace with each other and had an open policy which allowed the borrowing and exchange of sound bites from one anther. I was able to obtain a recorded interview previously conducted by Alex Jakarta for the World Service programme “ Africa have your say”. There it was, my feature was complete. I would get to Woman’s Hour a report on the bill that was about to become a gross violation of women’s rights even before they could get it for themselves. I was excited. I would make the first extended report on the indecent dressing bill and spark an international debate. Finally i was doing the kind of work I wanted. I was about to start living my dream, just before my hopeful next assignment on investigating child abuse by UN peace keepers in Ivory Coast .

I was already gleaming from ear to ear. The phone was ringing and I was about to be told what day and time my feature would be aired. Then I answered the call, “Hi Wana, its Alex from BBC Radio Four’s Woman’s Hour”… I know you have worked so hard at this report but im afraid at Woman’s Hour, we like to give our audience a sense of place and actuality, we think that the atmospheric sound doesn’t fit very well with the piece, so we decided we wont be able to use it”. There I was on the other side of the telephone feeling a rush of heat through my bowel. With an equal dose of despair and desperation I said “you don’t have to pay me, I don’t mind if you use it anyways”. Then she retorted “im afraid we won’t be able to use it but please make sure you always keep in touch with us because we love your ideas, enthusiasm and energy”. Then I dropped the phone and retreated back into one of my internal monologues. Though more fired up this time around.
You mean to tell me that in one of Africa’s most populous nations, some maniac is about to make it illegal for young girls to wear sleeveless and knee length dresses, it is about to become a punishable offence(imprisonment actually) to wear spaghetti straps, women could be raped in jail, and you are more concerned with atmospheric sound that doesn’t fit in, the way you want it to. The only words I could hear echo in my thoughts was that of my friend Rotimi and it went thus “What is point”.
I eventually got a couple of other commissions , mostly for the world service. Somewhere along the line, I successfully became jaded. I packed all two suitcases of my life’s belongings and hopped on a plane to Nigeria . I eventually got a gig prostituting myself as a radio personality on the airwaves. I couldn’t even read the newspapers because every article was paid for. Either in envelopes of cash, recharge cards or branded Tee shirts and note pads. I realised the papers were controlled by publicists and corporate communications people. The airwaves by advertisers and sponsors. Some news journalists just copy and paste from other news websites, waiting for supplementary information from the state spin doctors.
These days I try to exercise the little conscious fibre I have left by writing bitter social commentary. Thanks to blogville, comment is free. I also have a radio show where I try to give as much airtime as possible to underground recording artists. It’s become my form of campaign music journalism. I tell myself it’s a public service. Though I must admit, they start to bore me the more popular they become.

I still cling on to my Fela records and my Dadaist collages. I swapped the afro for a perm. I even tinted it blonde and added some hair extensions. My mother still hopes I can be like Amanpour someday. Somehow I hope so to. Im allowed to dream aren’t I.

I THINK THEREFORE I AM.....

wana udobang
So Nicholas Cage is broke. So is one time 50 cent and Paris Hilton producer Scott Storch and believe me the list does go on. Although not so deep inside, i say “you had it coming, you deserve every bit of poverty that is about to be unleashed on you”.
As i get more and more entrenched in the Nigerian entertainment business, i uncover new and not so new wonders every day. I recently chastised a friend for taking a fifteen thousand naira corporate cab whilst his pocket were a tad bit try. I wondered why he couldn’t just give some guy two thousand naira to buy petrol and five grand for some change. Not to seem overly condescending but Wole Soyinka went to Mo Abudu’s show on a bike just to bypass the traffic, and really it doesn’t get any bigger than that.
I then went into a tirade about other celebrities who were already paying over twenty five grand per day in car hire services, meanwhile they had just managed to elevate from the apartments they were squatting a while before, of course with other numerous squatters and floaters too. Not to bore you with arithmetic but twenty five grand a day in five days equals one hundred and twenty five grand. In a month its half a million naira and in two months its a brand new kia. And that can tie you till your next consignment of cash, then the logical process of upgrading takes place.
He said i was mean and a bit harsh. Actually he said i was being very judgemental.
He went further saying i was acting like i didn’t know how difficult it is for people to take you seriously in the business. He gave me a scenario and it went thus.
Imagine you had an important meeting to go to, where you had to negotiate with brand managers and you are constantly being sized up or down depending on your automobile of choice. The thought in itself was a bit too warped for me to grasp because to me it was simple. If they offered you a fee that was unacceptable, you just say NO. I was always of the school of thought either your talent or hustle experience should speak for itself without having to buy a Murano with your last show money and then living in it afterwards.
The thing is that this phenomenon penetrates and disperses into other sectors of Nigerian society. From banking to oil and gas, earning a hundred thousand naira a month and buying designer suits alongside Peruvian hair on credit is perfectly normal. Even hawkers make it perfectly ok for you to have a credit facility. I had been told a fair few times to get a loan and buy a car. That way when i attend negotiation deals, i can be taken a bit more seriously. I deliberately omit the part that my meetings never materialised because the powers that be are more concerned with an all night rendezvous as opposed to my means of locomotion.
My friend keeps telling me you have to fake it till you make it and i want to tell him you have all faked it for so long and none of you seem to have made it yet. The interesting thing is, whether you got of a bike or a plane, no one might take any notice. He later tells me i won’t understand. Then i respond with the epistle that is my life story. I explain that i have been rich before, then dirt poor, and i understand what it feels like to need to fit in or to need to be taken seriously by the elitist confraternity that is Nigerians. Still its no reason to bankrupt yourself even before earning a wage. As my face book status reflects my every random thought, i engraved my rhetoric as my status update and received an interesting reply. The reply said “you think therefore you are and if you tell yourself long enough then you will become it, so living a false life might not be so false after all.”He added that is was called faith. And then i thought to myself when you start misinterpreting biblical concepts to aid your stupidity, then i see why we are the way we are. Nonetheless maybe i need to get acquainted with this new way of thinking. I’m off to purchase my Rover and fix myself up with an apartment in park view. I reckon this will propel the genesis to my life of financial surplus. Like a ten thousand pound student loan I’m still paying for isn’t bad enough. Thanks but no thanks. Though India Arie says “i am not my hair”, i say “i am not my car”. For now all so called embarrassing means of public transportation will do just fine.

THE RETURNEE ILLUSION

WANA UDOBANG
The last six decades saw the mass migration of our Nigerian folk to the Americas and British Isles. Fast forward to 2009, then came the new great depression, right behind it followed the default in mortgage payments, default in council tax, default in television license, and every kind of payment defaulted. Then it happened. All "Oreo cookies" and “Uncle Toms” ran back like repatriated slaves to rediscover their roots. In our case we hid under the umbrella of national service in a bid to find some kind of solace in the land we once rejected.

On Independence Day, I was invited to the beach with a returnee friend of mine. Of course all his other acquaintances were repatriates as well. I got chatting to one of them. We went over the whole cordial greetings and then, that all important question sufficed from somewhere. “so what do you do”. She told me she had just finished her very expensive MBA in the states and was weighing her options since she got back. She added that it wasn’t that she was not getting job interviews, but she didn’t really have much interest in the areas of finance they were offering. Then I had to ask “How much exactly are you looking for because that could be a bit of a problem”. She said she wasn’t going to collect anything less than half a million naira a month. I wanted to say to her that “Look my dear jand and yankee is pure water so I suggest you better settle for the hundred thousand or maybe hundred and fifty thousand, cos an MBA don’t make you so special”. These days the average twenty three year old already has a PHD. I remember when you had to have a minimum of three years working experience before you could be accepted for an MBA, but now it’s different. Foreign universities are heavily dependent on international fees to stay afloat, so every child who graduated from high school in 2005 can boast of two first degrees, a masters and a doctorate.
The thing was that she wasn’t the only one living the returnee illusion. I remember being coaxed up before I got here, “babes you, shouldn’t collect anything less than five million naira a year with car and driver…meen you have a British degree”.

Some of us fail to understand that the dawn of globalization came with it the demon of exploitation and slave labor. In Nigeria paying peanuts for mediocrity takes precedence any day. If brands like Nike and Primark can use Asian child laborers for less than a dollar a day, who are you, to think that you get automatic rights to be a star in this show.