A climax of ignorance permeates the media spaces. With a focus on the trajectory of Afrobeats, Ayo Shonaiya’s documentary is providing malnutrition for the truckload of amnesia in Afrobeats history. The totem of freedom and democracy it displays is shrouded in mystery for the social media generation youth (otherwise known as Gen Z). 1, October 1960, will soon become just a date - June 12 is towing that pathway. This misnomer is a measured move to nourish Nigerians to saturation with amnesia. The bedlam culminate when teaching History was removed from the curriculum over trivialities - a subtle shamble scheme. Nigeria is shrouded in a loop of chaos: a massacre is a familiar soundtrack education had long taken a sloppy route healthcare in Nigeria is a hermitage of death. The faces (Kehinde Ogungbe Baba Keke, Dayo Adeneye D1, and Obi Asika) had long shared an affinity with oblivion music whose lyrics still echo the Nigerian social reality (Eedris Abdulkareem’s Nigeria Ja ga Ja ga and Trybesmen’s Plenty Nonsense) the rusty but pristine beats that invite you to “gbe body”, equal Nicodemus, made squeaky-clean by Ayo Shonaiya’s close-up shot documentary. Those words, with amnesia as its vanguard, keep coming to the fore while watching Ayo Shonaiya’s documentary: Afrobeats: The Backstory. Heather Havrilesky’s “clause” is one of such: “Marriage requires amnesia…” The clause was abridged from a sentence in an essay whose title is now a fog on my mind. Yellow, red, and green stickers bearing the bloom of each sentence and a subtle clue of my obsession with its writers.
Aside from the English and African classics: William Shakespeare’s, Chinua Achebe’s, Franz Kafka’s, and Walter Rodney’s, stacked in my room, there are colourful stickers spread in a criss-cross pattern on my room’s wall. A measured withdrawal from my environment a smile followed by an ad-lib shout: Chai, see sentence na! - I gradually became a collector of sentences. White’s and William Strunk’s Elements of Style, acquired a fancy for ogling sentences.
I had, circa 2019 when I started reading E.
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