Nigerians in the Diaspora — Do Not Contribute To The Over-Animation of Our Culture!

(Nigerian) Jollof-rice is winning, Wizkid is, and so is Burna Boy. Tems is causing trouble with her tremendous and uniquely enticing voice, Mr Money With The Vibes, a.k.a “Asake” is topping charts and staying consistent with hits; all in, Nigerians are winning BIG & everywhere.

Over the weekend, Nigeria and Nigerians all over the world celebrated their country’s 62nd birthday and a popular Nigerian-American actress and comedian released her second comedy special and one of the skits embedded in the show, particularly caught my eye, and while I totally get the point, I kind of also felt drawn aback. There was a character in the first or second skit, where the younger version of this Nigerian-American actress was pitching to her parents reason to support her financially as she planned to move out of her parent’s house. This Skit had 4 major characters, this actress/comedian, her mum, her dad and her aunt, being “my catch”. This particular character was particularly over animated and I see this pretty much in a number of skits and shorts produced here in the diaspora amongst Nigerian content creators.

“My African/Nigerian mother did this…” — gotta flesh this out

Last year, tiktok was in a frenzy when several content creators and tiktok users, took to the streets of American cities in the search for popular Nigerian foods, ranging from jollof to swallow(fufu) and soups like egusi and okra. What particularly disgusted me, was the “displeasure/disgust” (for sake of a better word) that Diasporans and foreigners (to our food) publicly showed when they tried a food they were not particularly familiar with or simply didn’t soothe their taste buds, another thing that got me ticking was the unnecessary drama, from slapping the swallow to tossing in the air of the swallow (fufu) before finally unwrapping and attempting to taste it.

While I do not think it is our job to educate people on what exactly the culture of Nigeria as a people is, I most certainly do not believe that we need to contribute to this already established stereotype of what/who we are perceived to be.