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Nigerians are known
for being go-getters or what some people call hustlers. Watching the
episodes of the second week of the Nigerian Idol, the popular saying,
“Warri no dey carry last” came to mind but in place of Warri, I fixed in
Naija.

At the Abuja and
Calabar auditions, it was obvious that there were contestants who had
come to the centres not for a chance to feature on the Idol stage but to
get contracts with the sponsors Etisalat as jingle singers/composers.

There was one guy
who was so determined to showcase his “talent” that even when Yinka
Davies politely asked him to stop he insisted on singing his entire set,
more like giving his entire presentation. “Let me finish,” he almost
snapped out. Still at the end of the day, he went home with the ‘NO’
that the judges had intended to give from the minute he first said:
Etisalat. “They got me down,” he complained to co-host Anis Holloway
when he finally left the room. Another potential jingler who was also
disappointed with a ‘NO’, tried harder to impress the judges by
informing them that he had a rap version.

Then there were the
contestants who just could not own up to defeat. These contestants,
after leaving the audition room with a unanimous ‘NO’, would come to
Holloway and tell him instead that they got two ‘Yeses’! I guess no one
informed them that their auditions were being filmed for not just local
but international broadcast. Or maybe they were told and these are just
folks who, like I said, “no dey carry last”. Talk about lying on TV!

The auditions are
finally over and, according to the organisers of the show, so is the
comedy. As the show moves into the second stage, Theatre stage, we are
supposed to expect more of high drama and tension. The theatre stage is
where the judges would trim down the number of contestants from the 100
who scaled through the auditions to 50. These 50 lucky contestants would
then feature on the main show which is the third and final stage. We
can’t wait.