Out of 200 million Nigerians, can just 5,000 of you pay $5 a month for investigative journalism that will provide the information to save your country with?
No, it’s too expensive, Nigerians are too poor, and high-quality journalism should be free because journalism runs on ‘pashun’, twigs, and pieces of string.
A whole civilisation of 200 million people, including a 1st and 2nd gen diaspora of at least 5 million people cannot crowdfund a single journalistic platform to tell its own stories for its own general benefit because it’s too expensive and who needs that.
It can, however, fund a sprawling entertainment industry where all manner of inarticulate igbó smokers who add no value to anyone’s lives can regularly sell out shows with ticket prices 3 times the national monthly minimum wage.
No problem paying through the arse for superstar dumbos to mime their generic autotuned stuff and occasionally assault you into the bargain, but paying for what actually adds value to your life is where you lot draw the line.
Well, me I kuku took the hint and found a job that pays me my worth. I did what I could for you people. If 200 million people collectively decide that their brains are too small for them to deserve a place in a world that is actively seeking to exterminate them, then who am I to disagree.🤷🏿♂️
Nobody will sha say I did not play my part.
For the record, nobody is begging anybody for anything. I have a 9-5 that pays me more than what most Nigerians statistically can ever hope to earn. That’s not a brag, that’s a statement of fact.
But I’m done being a hero for the world’s largest mannequin collection. I shouldn’t have to struggle through a 9-5 in a whole separate career and then use that hard earned personal money to fund public interest journalism on behalf of 200 million children who can see the value in fundraising for reality TV contestants, but not in accessing information that could save (and previously has saved!) their lives.
As far as journalism goes, I’ve done everything I can do with the recurrent chin chin budget of <N300,000 (at the very best) that 200 million people were able to put together for a platform that literally prevented a war that would have turned Nigeria into Ukraine. That’s why I sold the platform and left its long term sustainability to become somebody else’s problem.
The next time Macron or Biden pushes the red button on the drug lord’s remote control, I will be on my 3rd or 4th passport working remotely from a beach in Thessaloniki. Nothing go join me with the matter. By the time una die finish, maybe the remaining people in that country will develop sense.
But knowing you people, maybe not even then.
Bulletproof heads.
