*Cue Game of Thrones theme music* You know the saying that does who can’t do teach or postulate? I might write about setting P and so on but no one sets a more horrible P than yours truly. I also don’t know how to handle when people like me and tell me they do. I might say the occasional smooth word or words and might even succeed in getting my paramour excited and dripping with anticipation but the follow through, the great leap from toaster to the satisfier of konji for the most part eludes me. On another note, I would like to apologize to those I have offended of recent, I am a weird one. Now that my awesomely awkward monologue is out of the way. I will go to the topic at hand or perhaps musing at hand. These are the thoughts of a man on the porcelain seat of defecation the proverbial shit for thoughts and thoughts of shit. If you are on Nigerian blogsville, Nigerian twitter and so on you would have seen the two videos below, one named “How many boyfriends can a Nigerian girl have”, the other “How many girlfriends can a Nigerian boy have” making the rounds on le internet. If you haven’t, here is my early Christmas gift to you below

Watching these two videos I wept in French, Chinese, Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic for the state of dating in my beloved country Nigeria. Like I alluded to in a previous post, is this the pick of the litter? Are these the young men and women that are going to take Nigeria to the 22nd century? Busy having up to 20 girlfriends or boyfriends at once and I can see from the video these seem to be University students of some sort. I meant the amount of time they spend managing multiple girlfriends and boyfriends perhaps they could spend on inventing something like their mates elsewhere in the world. Shrug. Did I mention there was a Durex survey that said Nigerian women are the most unfaithful on earth. Dare I say it might be similar for the men. This might not be a Red Nation like the Game song but an Ashawo nation. I mean on the one hand though in my personal opinion there might not be anything wrong in going on dates with several people as long as you have not committed to any single person. However I feel there is a problem when several people are walking around with the impression that they are your boyfriend or girlfriend. As they say, one day monkey go go market e no go come back or something like that.

As you might discern, I am a student of the Nigerian game, setting p, dating, hanging out or whatever the kids are calling it these days. One thing I have definitely observed and was slightly vindicated by these videos is that money is king evidenced by the guy saved as “Expenses”. This is not to say that money isn’t king elsewhere in the world. It is just perhaps more of the case in Nigeria than elsewhere or I think so. It is also evident that relationships are sort of a transaction and not in a subtle way. It is almost like many of the ladies are trading sexual favors for money. It is indeed like a market trade, on the one hand the men are looking for the “best product” (big bum bum, breasticles and tight kpukwe etc) and while they are doing that the ladies are trying to make sure the guys pay the maximum price possible (money, material things and maybe even marriage) much like how in a market the trader is trying to extract the maximum possible amount of money from the customer and make a profit. Hilariously one of the ladies blamed the economy for having multiple boyfriends. It is safe to say many of these ladies are concerned with the here and now. Many are not concerned with the future earning potential of young men not to talk of the intellectual prowess of a potential mate. I bet if you start waxing poetic or quoting WEB Dubois for any of these ladies, they will tell you to stop speaking too much “English”. That said, these ladies might just be acting on what they have seen growing up as a societal norm.

Before I get labeled misogynist, the guys also have 50% percent of the blame here. Many treat relationships like a transaction aka “I gave her so and so amount of money, I spent this and that, took her here and there, hence she must put out.” You haven’t lived in Nigeria long enough if you have never seen a guy almost boil over because a girl refused to put out even though he bought her a blackberry, paid her rent and so on. And no, this mindset is not restricted to the broke and not so rich, the adage, “It aint tricking if you got it” does not apply in Nigeria. There are billionaires that get worked up over the 60,000 naira they spent on a lady who did not give them the time of day. Word to the wise, treat any money spent on a lady as opportunity cost as they say in Economics, it is gone it is gone. You are not going to recover it and even if she does “put out” or you knack akpako/have coitus/copulate do not see it as vindicating your expenditure. That is just immature.

Like one of the guys said, having multiple girlfriends is just headache. On another note having multiple partners is one of the leading causes of HIV/AIDS if not the leading cause. Whether you want to have 1 or a thousand girlfriends or boyfriends be safe my pipu. Side effects of knacking akpako raw include death and that is some real ish aint no coming back from that unless you believe in Buddha but still…

Anyway, I have rambled for quite a bit. What do you think about having multiple girlfriends, boyfriends? Yay, nay or maybe? What do you think about materialism in the Nigerian game or dating in general? What are the causes? Any remedies in sight? I’d love to hear your take on the issue.