Urban Misnomers: The Agency of Contemporary Nigerian Pop Music in Stimulating Religious Obsession
Daniel Chukwuemeka
Language Editor, Bab.la GmbH—Oxford University Press, Hamburg, Germany
Assistant Lecturer, English Department, Godfrey Okoye University, Enugu, Nigeria
Abstract
Perhaps one of the most barefaced depictions of enigmatic inconsistency in contemporary African socio-cultural milieu can be located in the generic predisposition of most Nigerians to religious obsession. It is a puzzle that the most religious nation on the face of the earth ranks the second most corrupt country in the world. For a better understanding of this status quo, urban culture vis-à-vis pop music provides us with two incongruities. First, the intellectual sophistication and mental urbaneness that are expected to be the hallmark of Nigerian city dwellers are often readily muddled up by their instinctive propensity to embody the trite religious proclivities expressed in contemporary pop music, a disposition devoid of logic and common sense. Second, the affordances of religious morality are completely absent in the religious urban Nigeria, and instead what obtains is a disingenuous religious manipulation aimed at satisfying individual economic interests. The result, for instance, is a people that attribute success and failure, not to economic indices and factors of sales and production, but to the God factor and imaginary enemies, respectively, irrespective of the often foul means of acquiring the success and the apparent irresponsibility and mismanagement that usually precede and lead to the failure. While previous studies have revealed the extent to which the artistic expressions in Nollywood movies capture and spread this inordinate inclination, this paper aims to examine the various linguistic ingresses of Nigerian pop music in prompting, promoting, propagating and perpetuating this form of religious obsession among Nigerians: one that deemphasizes individual and government’s social responsibility—in reckless pursuit of prosperity and self-aggrandizement, and thus—in favour of a God-centred religious fad. Using Stewart Guthrie’s ‘A Cognitive Theory of Religion’, substantial for examining the significance of anthropomorphism within religion, the theoretical framework of this research will be hinged on the cognitive theory of religion since it will ultimately point out the concept of hyperactive agency, which is relevant—within cognitive science of religion and hence—to this study. With the agency of selected Nigerians’ pop songs (such as Korede Bello’s ‘Godwin’, Adekunle Gold’s ‘Pick up’, Flavour’s ‘Munachi’ and ‘Chimamanda’, Phyno’s ‘Fada Fada’ and ‘So Far So Good’, Humblesmith’s ‘Osinachi’, Timaya’s ‘Ogologomma’ and ‘Cutlass’, and Psquare’s ‘Bank Alert remix’) serving as cognitive capacities, this research seeks to examine how typical Nigerian minds in an urban setting could acquire, generate, and transmit obsessive religious thoughts and practices to the detriment and in neglect of their socio-cultural obligations and economic responsibilities.
Key words: obsession, urban, religion, cognition, pop.