By Pascal Oparada
The Yoruba race has penchant for prayers, especially if it concerns the well-being of relatives or acquaintances.
The Airtel Nigeria advert featuring Idowu Philips, popularly known as Iya Rainbow did justice to that culture.
In the advert, the actress called her son, Oluwasegun and began to profusely and almost endlessly pray for him after receiving gifts he sent her.
He had to perform various tasks while answering his grandmother’s lengthy phone calls.
The advert is targeted at subscribers who have cravings for lengthy calls.
Oluwasegun was joggling the phone call with his bath, dressing up, in the elevator, eating, hanging out with friends and on the bed, all the while hooked to his mother’s unending prayer.
At an instance, while with friends, he nudged them to join in saying Amin or Amen to mother’s prayers. Of course, his mother didn’t spare his friends as she prayed for them too.
The holes began to appear when Oluwasegun was in the bathroom. He had his whole body, including his face, eyes, mouth, etc covered with soap lather.
How was he able to hear his mother’s prayers with the noise of water splashing all over the place? Why didn’t he care if his phone got wet? He could simply ask her to call back or call her back at the least.
How come there was never a concern for his phone battery running down? How was he able to keep up his phone battery up for such a lengthy phone call that lasted for almost the entire day?
How was he able to hear the prayers even in the ever busy streets of Lagos and inside the bus since the advert clearly portrays the scene to be Lagos? Why wasn’t his mother distracted by the noise around the son?
Then the shocker! The announcer was also prayed for. How possible? We all know advert messages on radio and television are prerecorded and not a live situation, but here, we see Iya Rainbow praying for a voice over artiste.
“Adverts are playing on viewers’ fantasy, but not this type of hyperbolic fantasy, where you think that immediately you get a hold of this network, you can perform like this in real life,” said one critic of the advert.
Another critic asked: “We know the reality when you subscribe to their network. How come there was no single drop call for which this network is reputed for?”
I am not the one saying caveat emptor as most adverts would say.