Audiences left unsure whether senator is celebrating his wealth or being ironic with appearance in song by afro trap star Kach

Some politicians send Christmas cards of themselves posing as bacon sandwich-eating bikers. Some tell self-effacing jokes about their bald spots.

But a Nigerian senator may have taken political self-deprecation to new heights after appearing in a music video featuring fast cars, dollar bills and his own name on repeat – either celebrating his ostentatious wealth or in a deeply ironic parody.

With “LEGEND” written on his T-shirt, Dino Melaye, the senator for Kogi West, appears in the video for which he reportedly provided his house, cars and money.

“Balling every day like Ronaldinho. Money spending no aristo. Dino, Dino, Dino Melaye,” sings the artist Kach, while talking on a phone that is actually a stack of cash, then lounging on a bed with gold chains around his neck and a woman massaging his shoulders, and finally throwing money out of a Rolls-Royce.

At one point, Kach and friends sit at a dining table pretending to eat hundred dollar bills.
Kach makes afro trap, a hip-hop genre pioneered by MHD, and is the son of Nigeria’s minister of state for petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu.


At first, Sola Tayo, an associate fellow at Chatham House in London, was taken in.

“I thought it was satire, very bold satire,” she said. “I thought wow, this is incredible, he’s gone to all the trouble of getting the most realistic Dino lookalike. If it’s not a glowing tribute to him, it’s a slick rebuke of him.”

Satire is growing in popularity in Nigeria, which recently held its inaugural satire festival and launched a Daily Show-style TV programme, The Other News.

Melaye is also the author of Antidotes for Corruption, a book that, according to its cover, tries to “infiltrate the Nigerian psyche and instruct them that this [corruption] is a menace that must be understood and tackled head on”.

At the same time, he has said he will die before he stops supporting Bukola Saraki, Nigeria’s Senate president, who has spent most of his tenure fighting cases of corruption and failure to declare assets.

It is unclear how Melaye made his money.

“People like Dino are notorious for their extravagance – they’re not shy of showing off their wealth,” Tayo said.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkvv2agydso

Source: http://castgist.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=25348