20/20 vision thingz.(The case against Chidinma)
On a calm
Friday evening, I avoided my usual spot where I shed off the week’s working
suit, partake in some shoulder rubbing connects, intellectual discussion and
watch one or two of my “bigger boy’”
friends toke on cigar, while listening
to some live music….i just wanted to sip on one, chop some rich local pepper
soup and catch the evening breeze of jammed up naija music
coming in the wind from different angles; shoot the breeze, hood style. So I
went straight to my area.
Ngozi, the
lady who owned the restaurant had two main attractions; if it wasn’t the tasty
pepper soup, it would be the playful antics of her very cute son, who she hopes will go in
the opposite direction of a whole lot of kids these days and become a Pastor (as
her customers playfully call him). Other subtle features for the evening would
be Ngozi’ s well rounded rear , quite eye-candy indeed plus the occasional
football-led arguments in background(when in fact there wasn’t any match going
on), I guess dudes were just trying to see how much of bar football analysts
they could be as usual.
As I parked my car and walked in, Ngozi seemed
to have some very hot gist prepared for me before I got to the pepper soup
part. “Did you do anything for Etisalat? I saw your face on a poster today! I
said, hell no! no one would use my face on a poster, yeah, I do have a slowly fading six pack tummy(courtesy of my
wife’s ambition to make me look the part of a Nigerian husband), well cut abs
and a ruggedly graceful look, but I had dropped my dreams of modeling way back
since rumors of whether Tyson Beckford
is gay or not. I do have some pictures on my facebook page which used to
attract quite a few damsels but then, model for a telecoms company? Nahhhh.
Ngozi
didn’t give me room to order my pepper soup as she was insisting with all
conviction that my face was indeed the one she had seen on that Etisalat poster
and in fact she was willing to take me there(this is at a bout 9pm on a Friday evening) so I could see for myself.
This she insisted on until I was beginning to reflect on the remote possibility
of anyone I had taken shots for, well, I had taken some shots with a
photographer friend of mine and her partner! Eureka! Could they have used it or
sold the pictures out to the agency that handled the branding communications
for Etisalat? hmm….I smell end of year money! The mulla is on the way then….not
one to count my chickens before they are hatched, I said I would call my
photographer friend, this, to myself and to Ngozi I said let me enjoy my beer and
pepper soup while letting the would be Charles Anazodos and them buzz in the background .
We agreed
she should take a snapshot of the poster and let me have a look the next day on
my way from work since the location was within our neighborhood. To cut a long
gist half way, I was at Ngozi’s place the next day, by this time, mildly
calculating my possible end of year bonus, while articulating my phone book
list to ensure I still had a few reliable lawyer friends just in case it got
nasty, several peeks into my archive of
pictures indeed showed some few possible poses and strikes that could go in
that direction, I mean I had done these when I was promoting my album ‘hard
listeners’ and I remember seeing three different ones used in articles about me
in the Guardian newspapers and one or
two other tabloids, whatever…….Ngozi could be right after all, I mean how could
she mistaken what she had seen? she knows me that well, up close and personal,
I mean facial looks o!
I made my
stopover at a time she was very busy, a rush hour of sorts, she insisted she
could not come but I should go over to the location immediately, aptly
describing it as it was conveniently located between the petrol stations
closest to our street (rubbing hands with a wink now). I turned the corner and
took the other side of the road parallel to the location of the Etisalat
poster. As I cruised slowly down the street, this was at about 8pm and as usual
the streetlights weren’t working so I am trying to maximise the 20/20 vision my
eye-glasses try to aid me with to view the poster clearly from this side and courtesy
of slow traffic, I had time to see it! Alas, there it was, from across the
street, my fore-head, my slightly bulgy eyes and my eye- glasses which I always
feel I can convincingly acknowledge anything from any angle with,
shortsightedness or not, no doubt son…I immediately smelt the money, yes. That
was me alright; I am putting Etisalat,
their ad agency and anyone involved in this on blast!
As the
traffic trickled into a steady drift and I could pick up speed a bit I was
mentally doing the math, my friend Ngozi would definitely get her share of the
bounty for having such eagle-eyed sight and singularly picking out that picture
in the whole montage of street noise, horns, human traffic and all the street
buzz that closes our eyes from infinitesimal detail in the spectrum of Las Gidi
hussle…..or so I thought.
I turned to
the other side of the road and proceeded to park my car by the front of the
mostly deserted petrol station as it was late, say 9: 34pm. I stepped out
towards the kiosk she had described; it turned out to be a big flex spread of
about 9ft by 4 ft. I stepped further and every step seemed to slowly ebb away
my hope for the bounty, chai….Ngozi! A less blurry clandestine view made way
for a clearer one, at this point I realized it was more about a thought than
actual reality, I was fooled for a few minutes too, so how couldn’t Ngozi have
been fooled? Sorry! It wasn’t me on the Etisalat ad, it was close but close
wasn’t good enough, I stood in front of the advert and chuckled to myself, recollecting what that
the old saying goes, things are never really what they seem. Needless to say, I
didn’t need that Shaggy song to further point out that “it wasn’t
me’………..nearly has never and will never kill a bird.
Recently, a
video clip or supposed sex tape of young songstress Miss kedike a.k. a.
Chidinmma has been making the rounds, I was not one for viewing such
speculation but as a fan, I felt the need to see for myself. It looked like
her, it seemed she was the one in the act, but it wasn’t a 100% conclusive,
especially since our very smart Alec who
uploaded it only gave a miniature version
which blurs outrageously on magnification; this is where we need to be careful
about how we tear down other people’s hard work while trying to build ours.
Whoever put up that tape was up to mischief and that’s a bone of contention
indeed. I mean looking at my experience with Ngozi and the Etisalat poster” I
realize even more the possibilities of concluding from one glimpse and
momentarily making up my mind to pursue and antagonize.
We must be
careful of how we speculate because in the end, extreme look- alikes have
always been a common phenomenon, the fact that the internet makes it easy to
pick still or motion visuals at will and have a tag out on it because of a
resemblance to someone else is what is new. I will attach a picture to this
write-up and shrink it and do a mental exercise; tell yourself who you think
this lady is and you are wrong……it’s got no relation to a girl who just a few
years ago was still hiding under her umbrella. We ought to careful how we compare,
if I remember very well, a few years, a sex tape came out which was supposedly
Wizkid, well, my word to Chidinma and her camp; you are most likely about to
blow big time if we take on the accounts (banks inclusive) of what happened to
Wizkids career after then, congrats baby and keep your head up, we get eyes and
we dey shine dem well well!
In case I
forgot to mention, I saw Ngozi two nights ago after I had told her of course
that my actual disappointment is that after so many months of coming to her
joint, she still can’t tell me from a poster(I tactically avoided that fact
that I had been fooled initially by same). She mentioned a couple of days ago
that she suddenly noticed she hasn’t really been able to view things properly
in recent times (uhuhhh), she most likely needed to see an eye doctor, I told
her I will recommend the one I normally do my tests with.
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