I read a piece in which a popular Nollywood actress, Foluke Daramola-Salako, asserted that Nigeria has become a dumping ground due to its economic issues and loss of values, expressing displeasure at how cross-dressing issues are treated with flippancy. In the interview, Foluke noted that it is saddening that Nigeria’s value system is dying because THE GOVERNMENT IS NOT DOING ANYTHING.
The statement about the Government not doing anything is where I have a problem with the interesting interview. Nigerians always accrue all societal failures to the government of the day. If their children are bed-wetting, it is a result of the failure of the government. Even, if rodents disturb them in their bedroom, they accrue it to governmental inadequacies. We have however forgotten that the government reflects the society we live in, the failure of government is the failure of the family value system. The corruption that erodes our national institutions today is as a result of the failure at the home front and the enormous pretense and fake doctrines at our religious centers. The case of cross-dressing is not an exception.
Cross-dressing as a social practice, has a history that is as old as gender-specific clothing itself. There are literary and figurative representations of cross-dressing from the Aztecs, the ancient Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans. It shows up in Norse mythology, the Hindu epics, and the Odyssey. Cross-dressing was prohibited in the Bible; specifically in Deuteronomy Chapter 22 verse 5 and it was pronounced illegal in the UK in 1885. So it’s safe to say it’s been around us for a while now.
It occurs for religious, burlesque, disguise, status gain and other related reasons. Sometimes, it could be for sexual excitement or for the prevention of sexual harassment. Women cross-dressing and living as men began to appear in the early Christian Church when there were women saints found to be women only upon their death. In fact, it could be proved that women living as men seemed to have been more successful at it in the past three centuries than men living as women, possibly, because their motivations were different. Then, it was done to overcome the barricades that women had to face in terms of pecuniary prospects and independence.
The same fate befell the Nigeria popular cross-dresser. Mr/Miss Okuneye Idris Olanrewaju, predominantly known as Bobrisky. He/she is a Nigerian social media influencer and transgender woman. He/she is known for her presence on the social media. She went viral on TikTok for creating the “bobrisky” dance in 2021.
The history of Bobrisky is that of a determined person who has faced many ups and downs. She had a rough childhood due to the challenges of a polygamous family. Her parents separated when she was still young leading him to spend most of her childhood with her mother and lived with her father later on. Brought up in an Islamic faithful family, Risky has he/she loved to call himself at times, loved stereotypically feminine activities like cooking, cleaning, etc. Because her dad could not meet the financial needs of their large family, He/she began to fend for himself at age 16 which we termed as a family failure. This could have further exposed her to the street where she further developed her skills in cross-dressing. If Bobrisky’s father and mother hadn’t separated, maybe they would have been able to stop his unpopular venture.
Bobrisky, faced with the challenges of survival; ventured into a business to keep himself/herself afloat from financial challenges. She then started cross-dressing as a marketing strategy while he was selling unisex clothes during his/her undergraduate days at the University of Lagos. During an interview with the popular singer, Charly Boy, Bobrisky said he didn’t envisage that cross-dressing would lead him to becoming transgender. According to her, “Most times I try the female wears on myself and I love the outfits. From there, I moved to female hairstyles to makeup and more women were patronising my business. So I decided to keep cross-dressing since it was lucrative.” Lucrative indeed! If it’s not lucrative, how could EFCC trace 127.7M and 53M to her account domiciled with Ecobank.
Unfortunately for her, the society that was supposed to condemn her ventures jumped at it, made fun of it and she was celebrated. She became a cross-dressing star who charged a huge some of money for influencing on social media; another venture that became lucrative for her because of her teeming followers, or rather, fans on her social media handles. Most unfortunate is that celebrities started aligning with her, using her to chase clouts, identifying with their ventures for pecuniary gains. All are catalysts of societal abnormalities.
Ironically, she was celebrated and placed above the God-created women during the premiere of Beast of Two Worlds; a movie by Eniola Ajao, another real woman. Nevertheless, she and her team celebrated a fake woman above her counterparts. Suddenly, the netizens became worried about this feat. Criticism was coming from all angles, Risky became more popular than before and the Waterloo came. How it came?
This could be best explained by very Dark-man, an activist and a popular influencer on Instagram who vehemently opposed cross-dressing; maybe for personal reasons, ethical, cultural, or customary reasons as he claimed, jealousy or possibly for monetary reasons. However, he came to his platform to confirm that he went to jail so that he could jail Bobrisky. This could be true or could be a clout-chasing strategy, but, Bobrisky has also gathered lots of enemies for himself because of his seemingly successful venture in cross-dressing and flamboyant lifestyle.
Maybe it is now a payback time because of the best-dressed female award at the Beast of Two Worlds premiere. The unknown enemies and the society ladies who thought the award shouldn’t have gone to Risky, might have clicked the right or maybe the wrong button that releases the net that got Bobrisky hooked. Unfortunately for him, nobody stood for him, nobody wanted to be associated with him at the court, and he could not even meet up with the administrative bail offered him by EFCC. What a pity! Where are all the societal figures that cannot hold an event without inviting Bobrisky. They have all suddenly disappeared. Why is his arrest coming now? How many people have mutilated and abused the Naira without caution and on the streets too, without being arrested or prosecuted? This is just the beginning of the drama that is about to come. After 6 months of her incarceration. Nigerians will surely wake up to a a new page of interesting controversies on Bobrisky.
Nonetheless, it is all a result of societal failure! The rise, the growth, the downfall of Bobrisky and the intricacies thereafter, are results of societal failure and collapsed religion and family values.
OOA writes from Abuja.
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