By Oyinkansayo Wole-Bodunde.
VeryDarkMan is backing Eedris Abdulkareem’s banned song “Tell Your Papa,” after the Nigerian government considered it “inappropriate and offensive.”
The song’s message about hardship and insecurity in the country resonated with VDM, who criticized the government’s decision to silence the artist. He vowed to support Abdulkareem in re-making the music video, even offering to appear in it himself, and to use social media to amplify the song’s message.
VDM said, “I went to Eedris Abdulkareem’s page and saw the message NBC sent to him that they have banned his song, ‘Tell Your Papa,’ where he asked Seyi Tinubu, son of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to tell his father that there is hardship in the country and people are dying.”
VDM argued that the ban won’t stop the song’s message from spreading, especially on social media, and plans to create a new video, “Tell Your Papa 2,” highlighting more issues.
“Isn’t there hardship in the country? Ain’t people dying from insecurity? This is what we are going to do now. First of all, we don’t even know radio. How many people listen to radio or watch TV? That’s by the way. We are going to take it over by social media,” he said.
He believes the government’s actions are an attempt to control the narrative and silence voices that speak out about Nigeria’s problems.
VDM also said, “That is to say, this people listen to what is going on in Nigeria but they don’t want to act. Then when you talk, they want to control the media so that you don’t have a voice and this voice doesn’t exceed what they can control.”
