by Micheal Ace
I have said it countless times and I will repeat it: Nigeria has lost the moon while counting the stars. The Federal Ministry of Health recently took to their Twitter account that Olamide has violated the Tobacco control Act of 2015 in his new music video Wo by advertising and promoting second hand smoking. I have earlier read their displeasure over the video and now they have come with another threat of a jail term and one million naira fine.
Sometimes you just have to step out and cause trouble for people to know you actually exist. That is exactly what the Federal Ministry of Health has done. At the slightest itch, the president has to be flown abroad for medical attention just because of the inadequacy and the inefficiency of Nigerian hospitals. The Ministry has done nothing to address these medical issues so far but definitely finds the time to cut out a ‘less than a second’ video scene of a man holding a cigar in his hood and term it a violation of its law and a public health hazard.
This government plays too much. This same rapper has given out a sum of three million naira in the Wo challenge to encourage Nigerian youth and as well support their hustle. He drove back to his hometown, Bariga Lagos state, to shoot this video in an attempt to give back to his hood and the street at large from what he has received over the years. It’s evident from the way people rose and turned up to dance in the video that Nigerians are tired of everything concerning the government and Olamide has just given them exactly what they want.
Nigerians are angry and it will come to a time when the masses will run out of patience and storm their government. This move by the
Federal Ministry of Health has just shown how confused and clueless the government is about what is really happening in the country. Why can’t they ban the production and sales of the product finally if they are really concerned about Nigerians’s health? I still see people smoke by the road side, in joints and even at clubs and nothing has been done to curb this so far. The best they can do is to jail a musician for his video that contains a scene of a man holding cigarette.
I think the Federal Ministry of Health has taken more bottles than they can handle. They are drunk.
Op–ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija
Micheal is a poet and writer from Ibadan, Nigeria.
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