Idowu Samuel and Jacob Segun Olatunji
Sunday, January 14, 2007
The Federal Government has condemned a popular Nigerian movie actor, Ikem Owo, over his song “ I go chop your Dollars” which it said has been giving Nigeria a lot of bad image across the globe.

The government expressed misgivings on the lyrics of the song, which glorifies the practice of Advanced Fee Fraud, in Nigeria, lamenting that the song has painted the Nigerian people as fraudsters since it hit the international market more than a year ago. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mrs. Joy Ogwu gave the government’s official position to the song by Ikem Owo, during a National Policy Retreat for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidates in Abuja.

Mrs. Ogwu said she first came across the 419 glorifying song for the first time in 2006 in far away Chicago and felt terribly disgusted, sad and disappointed at the lyrics. The song, she said, was in bad taste for its tendency to spoil the image of Nigeria abroad considering the wider circulation, which she said it enjoys outside Nigeria.

The Osuofia’s song had earlier been reported to have featured the footnotes in a controversial documentary on Nigeria released in the United States by a civil society group in an attempt to prove to American citizens that Nigeria is a haven for fraudulent and corrupt practices. According to reports on the negative documentary on Nigeria carried by some newspapers in the country, the documentary was televised on major television stations, in the U.S, prompting the Nigerian Embassy in the US to complain officially to the US government.

However, the minister in her paper titled “Foreign Policy Objectives for a New Can-do-Nation” suggested that Nigeria needs to shift her paradigm on foreign policy that will incorporate the principle of self defence into its international agenda. Nigeria, she suggested, must focus attention on the pattern of growth and development of key countries in Asia, tagged “ Asia, Tigers”, the country noted to have developed on their own initiatives.
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