Nigerian churches in race to trademark 2011 slogans
31 Dec 2010
 Green Trousers are all the rage now in Nigeria.
An editorial:
Nigeria has been called many things -home of the happiest people on earth, one of the most corrupt nations on earth, a country of egos. But often left out is the fact that Nigerians are also one of the most religious people on earth.
Almost every Nigerian city has more than its fair share of churches and mosques and spiritualist clinics and many more places of worship of many more exotic religions. And every one of these places of worship never lack for dedicated followers or new converts - even as the number one man has demonstrated recently on his knees – God bless him.
As the New Year approaches, these churches etc, would all be staging night watch vigils to thank the grand deity for the year gone by, and to herald in the next 365 days.
This year particularly looks set to witness the most elaborate and flamboyant night vigils ever. This is thanks to, amongst other things, the fact that Nigeria officially joined the ranks of terrorist nations in 2010, thus, serious prayer is needed to wash the bad luck away - make e nor follow us enter new year o.
Nigerians will forever remember 2010 as the year a president died in office, the year a foolish boy attempted to blow up his pants, the year some idiots learnt how to detonate bombs, the year the president brought facebook to Nigeria, the year the word, Naija, was almost banned, the year somebody punched up OBJ, the year OBJ dey laugh o!, the year $50,000 was officially declared too small to be a bribe…The list, sadly, goes on.
It has been a year of mixed blessings for Nigeria however, because out of all the bad, bad things, a few great things still happened to the great Nation:
Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani wrote her amazing book, ‘I do not come to you by chance’; Lola Shoneyin wrote the amazingly funny, ‘The secret lives of Baba Segi’s wives’; Nuhu Ribadu ‘reluctantly’ agreed to run for President; They did not succeed in shutting down Saharareporters; The information minister resigned; WazobiaReport.com was born.
Such a year of mixed blessings, however, throws up a dilemma for those planning to stage spectacular night vigils into the New Year. Perhaps the first problem is how to tackle the failed predictions of many pastors.
Who was it that predicted the disintegration of Nigeria before the end of the year? Well, I bet his congregation prayed and fasted to avert their leader’s vision, and the rest of us, freeloaders that we are, are eternally in their dept, even though we do not know it.
While predictions that did not come to pass can be explained away by divine intervention, many churches should still be weary of making new promises they can’t keep, going into the New Year.
For this reason, such slogans as “2010, the year of progress!”, “2010, my year of uncommon favour”, as we were inundated with this time last year, should now be unpopular with churches.
Pastors should now opt for more neutral and amenable to interpretation slogans as: “2011, the year of great revelations.”
For who can fault that twelve months from now?
If you become prosperous in 2011, God revealed the secret of success to you, and if you did not…Well, maybe your enemies were revealed to you, and in 2012, you shall have your “Year of Conquering Revealed-Enemies-of-Progress."
And therein lays the problem: there are only so few meaningful, yet safe, New Year slogans, and many churches may have already printed flyers bearing several versions of the precious few.
To this extent, many pastors and other spiritual leaders may now have to resort to obtaining trademarks for the year 2011 slogans they have come up with. And this is exactly how we come up with our stories: we start with an observation, and we look for an angle.
But, doesn’t it sound too far fetched? Really? In Nigeria?
Being a satirist has demonstrated one thing to us: In a country like Nigeria, the outright ridiculous is more likely to be real. Let’s not even bother with examples.
We at WazobiaReport.com are not a Church, as evidenced by our lack of ownership of private jets thus far, so normally we wouldn’t be frantically scratching our heads trying to come up with slogans for the New Year.
We would have started with a title, e.g.: 'Nigerian churches in race to trademark 2011 slogans,' and we would have crafted a funny story around it.
But we do like to throw a spanner into the works, and for this reason we have obtained trademarks for the following apolitical, non-predictive, litigation-safe, year 2011 slogans – and we just can’t wait for someone to steal one of them so we can sue:
1. 2011: Year of big dreams!
2. 2011: Me too, I go laugh o!
3. 2011: God’s will shall be done
4. 2011: Yet another year.
5. 2011: My Year of Praying to God
6. 2011: The year before 2012
7. 2011: Twenty Eleven - Made in Heaven.
Have a great 2011 folks.
|