By Eric Elezuo

While Davido is busy invoking ‘banana’ to fall on someone, the hammer of the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) has fallen on him and two other popular artistes, Olamide and 9ice as their songs have been banned from the airwaves.

Olamide’s ‘Wo’, 9ice’s ‘Living Things’ and Davido’s ‘If’ remix were all banned.

For Olamide, it is suspected that the depiction of smoking, was something that didn’t sit well with the NBC. Though fans of Olamide have argued that the smoking ‘thing’ occurred in only one scene, NBC has refused to tolerate whatever is not edifying.

In his response however, Olamide apologised for any harm caused. He tweeted; “No intentions of promoting tobacco to get people killed. I love my people, I love my country. One love, one Nigeria.”

The NBC placed a ban on works by the three top level music artistes for an alleged violation of its rules and regulations.

It named Olamide’s Wo and Wavi Level; a remix of Davido’s If and 9ice’s Living Things as the culprits in a current list of banned songs and music videos that it released to the public.

Although the commission did not give specific reasons for banning the songs, the decision may have been influenced by a recent reaction from the Federal Ministry of Health to the music video of Olamide’s new song.

In a message posted on Twitter, the ministry kicked against the video of Wo, released recently and described the content as contravening the Tobacco Control Act of 2015.

The Ministry of Health also noted that the video contained scenes showing youths of different ages openly smoking substances believed to be either cigarettes or narcotics and concluded that such scenes could encourage second-hand smoking among underage children anywhere in the country.

However, this is the third time that the NBC has brought down its hammer on a popular song by Olamide.

The last time was 2016, when two other songs by the rapper were slammed for what the commission described as “obscene and indecent” lyrics.

Also, before the ban on 9ice’s Living Things, the song had been fingered as the subject of a statement by fellow rapper Falz, which urged Nigerian musicians in general to be mindful of the kind of messages that they passed to the public in their songs.

Falz had appeared to be genuinely concerned about the impact of such messages on the youth. He pointed out that artistes who saw nothing wrong about glorifying Internet fraud, drugs and other anti-social behaviour were not doing the society any good.

Davido, who is also known OBO, may have had his song banned from the airwaves as a result of the lyrics which depicts visual obscenity, and creates amorous intentions among listeners, who mostly are the very young ones.

While the NBC may succeed in taking the songs off airwaves, it is a known fact that even youths, who may not have heard the songs before will have their curiosity channel tuned towards going for it now. This is because banning of music of any kind is the beginning of its popularity. And that may eventually happen to the banned songs.