In Nigeria’s bustling cyberspace, Albert Ofosu Nketia is a name that needs an introduction, but his face doesn’t. At barely seven, Nketia’s meme is potentially the most popular kid video in the Nigerian social media space. The fluky kid holds a permanent residency in the phones of millions of Nigerians who carry him about rent-free without knowing his name or nationality. You probably have seen him crying and laughing altogether on your phone today.
Nketia is that little boy in a faded, black-and-white checkered shirt worn over torn blue jeans, sitting at the doorstep of an old house.
Nketia is that little boy in a faded, black-and-white checkered shirt worn over torn blue jeans, sitting at the doorstep of an old house. In the now-famous video lasting less than 10 seconds, the child begins in tears, his face scrunched in misery, but his crying suddenly changes into a burst of laughter, revealing two missing upper teeth. Even Sorrow, the father of Sadness, would fold up in laughter if it witnessed Nketia’s melodramatic switch from tears to tickle.
But there is a short story behind Nketia’s hilarious video. This is the story.
It was dinner time in a poor Ghanaian home in the year 2023. Nketia had looked forward to a meal of yams and stew, but the mother hung her son’s hunger on the scale of availability by cooking plantain instead. Frustrated, Nketia launched into tears. Quickly, his grandmother, whom the video did not capture, sang him a song, and he burst into laughter in the same breath.
Nketia’s uncle recorded the bittersweet incident with his phone. He sold his phone shortly afterwards, without deleting the video. The new owner saw the video and posted it online. The internet went afire.
From the pangs of hunger to the melody of grandma’s lullaby, Nketia’s seriocomedy turns full circle. His performance quietly interrogates the maxim “a hungry man is an angry man,” while also asterisking the Yoruba proverb, “Ebi kìí wọnú, kí ọ̀rọ̀ mí wọ̀ ọ́.” Yet, Nketia’s cry-laugh paradox also illustrates the theme of clarity in the Yoruba proverb that says, “Ti a ba n sunkun, a ma n reran” – tears do not blur the eyes from seeing.
A few days ago, Nigeria witnessed its own cry-laugh theatre.
The almighty Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Chief Nyesom Wike, made a U-turn from the trajectory of tragedy into the corridor of literature when the bushrat he thought he had caught by the tail, wriggled out of his grip, leaving in his fist white tail hair, ‘òkété bórù mọ́ Wíke lọ́wọ́’.
Known for his volcanic temper and intimidating rhetoric, Wike, the talkative minister, expressed anger about the comments made by television anchor Seun Okinbaloye, who warned on live television that the nation was heading towards a one-party state, with the systematised electoral impediments allegedly strewn in the path of the African Democratic Congress.
Okinbaloye wailed on Channels TV programme, Politics Today, “What makes the race very interesting is when it is competitive. I mean, not when only one party stands in the middle of the ballot, and you’re looking for the rest of the political parties. I mean, when some of us talk, it looks like our mouth is smelling.
The remarks stung Wike like pepper in the eye, and he yelled. So, in a rebuttal to the TV anchor’s lamentation, a guttural Wike addressed a press conference in Abuja, Nigeria’s seat of power, and erupted, “In fact, I was surprised yesterday, thoroughly surprised when I was watching ‘Politics Today’, Seun. If there was any way to broke (sic) the screen, I would have shot him.”
One of the journalists at the press conference quickly interjected, asking, “And commit murder?” while another asked if Wike was only going to shoot the TV screen or shoot the anchor himself. Wike replied chillingly, “In fact, it (the shot) would get to him (the anchor).”
To Wike, the lawyer and self-proclaimed democrat, Okinbaloye’s offence was so grave that only being shot was fitting enough for punishment, not a day in court, not an allocution, not a fine, not time in jail; only the trigger would do. The gun is mightier than the pen. Blood is sweeter than truth.
Nyesom, the son of Wike, goes on to further aver that, as the interviewer, it was wrong of Okinbaloye to immerse himself in the conversation by saying, “We cannot allow only one party…,” stressing that with such a statement, the anchor had left the Fifth Estate of the Realm and descended into the pit of politics.
Therefore, Wike, a former council chairman, former governor, former minister, leader, father and Christian, was so livid that he brought a double-barreled to the press conference. Through one barrel, he fired hyperbolic shots. Through the other barrel, he fired grammatical blunders that made viewers wonder if the minister’s middle name was Oníbọnòjé or if he ever went on hunting expeditions in the forest of a thousand demons. Only Chief Zebrudaya, alias 4:30 of the rested New Masquerade sitcom and popular content creator, Legge Miami, could say, “If there was any way to BROKE the screen…,” like Wike confidently did.
Although Wike explained that his fury against Okinbaloye’s position incensed him enough to point a figurative gun at his TV screen and blow the anchor’s nutty head off, the backlash that trailed his cock-and-shoot outburst necessitated a further clarification by his media team. In the clarification, the minister explained that his gun-a-blazing cowboy bravado was only a hyperbole, and not ‘talk and do’. Exaggeration is a more popular word for hyperbole. Wike’s use of exaggeration is not lost on Nigerians, who are used to exaggerated electoral promises and achievements by the political class.
But there is more to Wike’s purported hyperbole than meets the eye. Parentally speaking, if Wike’s former political benefactor, now archenemy, Chief Rotimi Amaechi, says he was going to hyperbolically shoot Jordan, Wike’s son, would Wike have dismissed such a threat or would he not call press conferences across the seven continents of the world, begging President Donald Trump to come to his rescue? How does Wike think Okinbaloye’s wife, children and relatives would feel when they hear a powerful government official threaten their loved one? Wike owes Okinbaloye, Channels and Nigerians a public apology for his indiscretion. He should not turn a crying matter into laughter like Nketia, the little Ghanaian kid. He shouldn’t hide a death threat behind the olive branch of hyperbole.
