Last Friday, March 8, 2024, the World rallied behind the call to “Invest in women: Accelerate progress”, the theme of this year’s International Women’s Day.
On Social Media, women and non-women took a stand using the hashtag #InvestInWomen. Though this works for awareness, the greater need is action to reverse the declining investment in causes for women’s equity and inclusion.
“Achieving gender equality and women’s well-being in all aspects of life is more crucial than ever if we want to create prosperous economies and a healthy planet. However, we are facing a key challenge: the alarming $360 billion annual deficit in gender-equality measures by 2030, the UN exhorted”.
This call to “invest in Women” is a perennial call at the Dataphyte Foundation. It echoes in our conversations. It filters through our writings.
“When Nigerian women win 10 medals while men win 3, there should be more thoughts on the higher returns on investing in women’s education and emancipation by Nigerian families.
“Then there will be more tracks of joy from the likes of Tems, more tears of joy from the likes of Tobi, and more tastes of joy for the entire nation.
“When the ratio of women to men in golden leadership positions in Nigeria becomes 10:3, everything’s gonna be alright,” we concluded in a Data Dive, Soros, Tems, and Bob, centred on Tems‘ cover of Bob Marley’s evergreen song “No Woman No Cry”,18 months ago.
We represent that evergreen call today.
Soros, Tems, and Bob, on Sorrow, Tears, and Blood (Abridged)
“I am Queen of the most powerful nation in the world, and my entire family is gone. Have I not given everything?”
Angela Bassett’s outburst conveyed Queen Ramonda’s pent-up pain in the teaser of the sequel to the movie Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
However, at the outset of the movie trailer, Tems’ voice reminds the Queen and every woman, mother, sister, daughter, and those who know their fears or see their tears, of Bob Marley’s admonition that “everything’s gonna be alright.”
Tems, the Nigerian Diva, clearly made a soulful imprint on this 79th cover of Bob Marley’s 1974 song, No Woman No Cry, as she breathes the spirit of the times into Marley’s intense spiritual.
She displayed what Smokey Robinson described as “know”, when he wondered how a much younger Michael Jackson could sing “Who’s loving you” – a song Smokey wrote and recorded years before Michael did – “like that”.
Tems sang as one who knows Ramonda’s interior pain and political exhaustion.
She knows that Queen Ramonda’s words were also those of the widow queens of 9 Nigerian soldiers and 5 police officers ambushed and cruelly murdered on duty by terrorist groups last week, with 8 of the 9 soldiers killed in Abuja, the country’s capital.
Tems knows that Ramonda voiced the same anguish of Nigeria’s bereaved mothers who lost their children to unhinged state forces in Delta State, at the Lekki Toll Gate and in Ogbomoso; of the confusion and pain of the baby that was amputated by Nigeria’s celebrity bandits last week; of mothers who still lose their all daily to cruel, violent groups that have overtaken every part of the country.
Her ballad revealed a deeply felt “know” of her people’s sorrow back home in Nigeria – a knowing she had internalised and now internationalised in the Black Panther soundtrack in such a personal and political way as Fela Anikulapo Kuti mused in his song, Sorrow, Tears, and Blood, over 40 years ago.
Yet, Tems knows this same situation differently from Fela, her musical forbear. For instance, Fela, in 1977, identified the agents of terror and bloodshed in Sorrow, Tears, and Blood, as the Nigerian Army and the Nigerian police, who earned the dreaded nickname of “kill and go” for their trademark wanton “wasting” of innocent lives with impunity.
Now, in Tems’ Nigeria, the Nigerian Army and Nigerian Police no longer have the monopoly on the trade in Sorrow, Tears and Blood. Formidable Nigerian terrorist organisations, celebrity bandits, and ethnic militias now surpassingly “leave sorrow, tears and blood” in their trail as their “regular trademark”.
While the substance of angst and dread in Sorrow, Tears and Blood persists, the remix of terror in Nigeria since 1999 has morphed from Fela’s 1977 mix.
The dread of Boko Haram, ISWAP, and other upcoming terrorist gangs now dominates the real and ethereal realms of the people’s consciousness – deeper than the fear of misguided soldiers and policemen that still terrify the people each day.
Tems: So Dry Your Tears, I say,
Sounds like sadness & healing at the same time. What a spiritual dirge her voice turned it to 😭… This is a Hymn – Paschal Madubata, capturing the mood of Tems’ cover of Bob Marley’s No Woman No Cry.
Blending raw hope with naked pain in each chord of her song, Tems betrayed the only carriage Nigerians deploy to push on through their individual and collective fate – that it’s taking my life, but I won’t die poise – when enduring sadness and attempting healing in one breath.
For some, mental pain and material possibility can cohere. So, Tems tried to convince a woman she met in her sojourn in Wakanda of this possibility. And it seems she has spurred every female athlete in her home country to make such international feat out of their national fate.