Oprah Vs Nigeria..So we're all fraudsters then
Temi Omojuwa

I for one have never had much respect for Oprah Winfrey, and her latest ill advised and ignorant rant about Nigeria only convinces me further that this woman is someone with very little intelligence who has just 'lucked' into fame and fortune, who has no credibility whatsoever, and who should not be taken seriously.

She is an opportunistic, self serving and egotistical woman with a highly inflated sense of her own celebrity. For a woman who visits the Hermes shop in Paris and demands to be served after closing hours, and when she is refused service, asks, 'do you know who I am', and then goes further to solicit, and accept an apology from Hermes on her show, their apparent crime being that they dared to accord her less than the preferential treatment that her 'status' as international megastar of no mean repute deserves?

Seriously, what credibility, or integrity can such a person lay claim to? Where is the humility and well balanced perception of self? What can one expect from such an individual? An impassioned and objective assessment of an issue? Not likely.

She is quoted as saying that all Nigerians regardless of their level of education, are fraudsters.  Then she reportedly ends the show with the following well though through caveat:

'I know I'm going to get a lot of calls from Nigerians saying that there are a lot of honest Nigerians out there, but don't bother calling, we already know that...'

What sheer buffoonery...

Even if this is just a rough paraphrase of what she said, making a statement that even be misconstrued as such about an entire nation - on television, is still a faux pas of no small proportions.(I don't care what personal views she holds in the privacy of her own home, but when she goes public with stuff like that, she brings the scale of her ignorance to a whole new arena).

Those Nigerians that will defend Oprah's comments in the name of self reflection are missing the point, and they are the very reason she can even muster up the courage to make such public statements. You see, we very often make ourselves easy targets and are only ever too eager to believe the worst of ourselves, and have others cast us as evil.

What she has said is very much like saying that all muslims, regardless of their level of enlightenment, are suicide bombers. This statement is as bizarre as it is untrue, but it follows the exact same logic that Oprah has employed to come to her conclusion about Nigerians.

Incidentally, Oprah wouldn't dare make such a statement about muslims, because it would be politically incorrect to do so, and the backlash she'd receive from the muslim community and indeed the entire international community would be too much for even her own level of popularity to withstand.

But she can say such about a country like Nigeria with confidence, because presumably, any negative comments about Nigeria must be true. We're fair game in the international playground, and indeed,  even within our own quarters, there will be those who will say 'we deserve it' all in the name of trying to appear progressive, and objective. Apparently, being a Nigerian who is ready to admit with the rest of the world that Nigeria is a haven of internet scammers and thieves, makes you a Nigerian that is not just objective, but above it all...who knew huh?

Oprah (and countless others like her in America) suffered from incest and sex abuse as a youngster. We could take a leaf from her book and say that all Americans are paedophiles and sexual molesters, but we won't because we know better. We know that there is profiling that is reasonable and necessary, but then there is a sort of stereotyping which cannot simply be defensible in any rational framework.

And all that aside, for a woman of such supposed standing to actually come on television and brazenly sidestep the obvious issue of the complicity of the 'victims' of these internet scams is outrageous to say the least. Since when do aspiring fraudsters who are double crossed by their co-conspirators have the recourse to shout out to the world that they have been duped?

If you get solicited via an email to participate in what is clearly an attempt to defraud, and you decide to go along, then if you get duped, I would hope that if you come forward with such news, you would at least get indicted for the role you were hoping to play in the purported scam. Instead, these idiots are being glorified, even celebrated as hapless victims, whom we should feel sorry for because they lost their life savings in the process of trying to perpetuate fraud on a major scale. What ever happened to the old adage, there is no honour amongst thieves?

I have seen countless of these internet emails, and my only instinct has been to press the delete button. That's because I am an honest person who knows that if a total stranger, (or a lifelong friend, no matter) sends me an email proposing to give me a bazillion dollars for doing nothing more than providing bank details or somesuch, I KNOW ITS A CON, or at the least, I KNOW ITS DISHONEST, and I do the only possible honest thing, I ignore it.

These fools that get taken in by these scams are just as guilty, if not more so, as the originators, and its about time Oprah, and others like her, who are quick to reserve opprobrium for the originators of these scams, look at the real issue, and appropriately determine who the real victims are.

In all of this, the only victims are the millions of honest, hardworking, innocent and law abiding Nigerians, who are being vilified and criminalised daily by the mean-spirited accusations of Ms Winfrey and the rest of the Western media, for the crimes of an infinitesimally insignificant fraction of an entire nation, all in a bid to create a new wave of anti-Nigerian sentiment.

I can't help but wonder what would have happened if the genealogist that recently traced Oprah's DNA back to West Africa and determined that she is of 98% West African extraction, had found that was Nigerian. Since she is so unashamedly anti-Nigerian, (I hear her latest crusade is to put pressure on the US government to sever diplomatic relations with Nigeria, and other 'corrupt' nations), I am guessing that revelation may well have driven her to suicide!

And oh, by the way, when told she was 98% West African and possibly 2% Asian, she whimpered like a wistful puppy, 'are you sure?', there's no white blood in there anywhere?' Pathetic and atrocious if you ask me, even within a humorous context.

As a proud black person, I am ashamed that this woman is the most well known, and probably highly regarded black woman in the world. I's a crying shame that 50something years, and a bazillion dollars later, she still has not let go of her childhood insecurities over being black in a white world. Perhaps, herein lies the motivation for her highly irrational rant. Maybe, in taking such an objectionable and offensive stand about the most populous black nation in the world, her quest for legitimacy and acceptance from the whiteman can finally gain hold. Poor Oprah. I think she may need more therapy...or higher ratings...or both....