The word “selfie” may have been around since 2002, but it started to enjoy popularity on social media last year when smart phones became ubiquitous.
Short for self-portrait, celebrities are mostly the ones who made the selfie popular with their knack for sharing everything, even moments formerly considered confidential on social media. The media of choice these days is Instagram. Selfie has since been crowned England’s word of the year for 2013 and subsequently added to the Oxford Dictionary.
Nigerian celebrities have joined the fray, taking it to what some call dangerous limits. They have been known to share everything from breastfeeding a baby to airing their dirty marriage laundry to attract attention and publicity. It started around August last year with the messy divorce details of actress Chika Ike and Tony Eberiri. The crescendo has built to the current divorce between Tchidi Chikere and Sophia.
In-between that there have been shares from Tuface Idibia, Ali Baba, Toyin Lawani, Sarah Ofili, Oge Okoye, Kaffy and Wizkid. Perhaps the biggest culprits are Caroline Sam (Maheeda), Halima Abubakar, Cossy Orjiakor and Judith Mazagwu (Afrocandy).
To celebrate their first marriage anniversary, Tuface shared a picture of his wife, Annie, sitting on a pool table, while Annie on her part shared one of herself breastfeeding on Mother’s Day.
Ali Baba, in sharing his wardrobe, said in a footnote that it was now clear that there are some people “who suffer from hypocrisy seasoned with envy and beef”. He went on to say that when foreign stars post their wardrobes, all they get is ‘likes’ from these same set of people who say it is self-serving for Nigerian stars to do the same.
That did not stop Lawani from flaunting her toned abs, her tattoo and kissing her man on the dinner table. She too had a note with her post saying that a lot of women out there can’t even put on a bikini after one kid, but “after two, I can still flaunt”. Then there was the dancer, Kaffy, doing the same, 21 and half months after giving birth.
Wizkid only recently posted a picture with him clutching a bundle of dollar bills to his ear.
Ofili, a model, designer and beauty consultant has also shared sultry bathroom photos of herself causing a big stare.
The champion of them all would have been the actress, Halima Abubakar, who posts new pictures almost on a weekly basis, but for Cossy Orjiakor’s tears over a broken vibrator only recently.
In many ways, Afrocandy, who prides herself as one of Nigeria’s best known porn stars, is like Cossy. She makes headlines out of the smallest things and posts selfies most of the time.
Each time Halima posts, she is either showing off a diamond watch, pink weave, bag or other item.
Then there is Oge Okoye, who increased traffic on many websites early last year with her photo series of near-nude pictures. She has since continued to post every happening in her life on the internet. Perhaps, the most popular are photos that show her clutching one shopping item or another. Oge is rivalled only by Maheeda who used to be a gospel artist but has now gone the way of the variant of hip-hop that has her showing a lot of flesh.
Not only does she post soft porn pictures from her videos online, but the videos have also become online hits with people clicking away without a care in the world.
Filmmaker and social commentator, Charles Novia, in commenting on the recent online spat between Chikere and his ex-wife, said celebrities are human too.
“However, while we are human, there are expectations of decorum we all must adhere to,” he wrote.
