Much ado about Mercy Johnson’s train ride
It is interesting how hypocritical we could be in Nigeria. I could not help but laugh at the level of hypocrisy some of us exhibit about certain issues.
The Mercy Johnson train ride saga that has flooded the internet since the beginning of last week is what made me say this. I don’t know when hopping on a train in Nigeria has become a crime when most of us travel either to UK, USA, Hollande, or France to name a few countries and we do the same.
In a press statement made available by her publicist, Mercy Johnson made her position clear. She said does not see any reason why she can’t board a train with ordinary people.
“I was around Iddo at Ebute Metta when my Range Rover developed a mechanical fault and I had to make a very important appointment in Ikeja regardless of the usual traffic congestion in Lagos. Luckily, a member of my management team was around, he suggested a train ride and we were in Ikeja in less than 30 minutes but that is not the crux of this statement.
“Like I mentioned earlier, I have had to answer questions in private and public as to why I would board a train because trains in Nigeria are considered a means of transportation for the masses and not-so-rich people. A friend called and said I just devalued my brand by being on the train with ordinary people. I couldn’t help but laugh. Are we extra ordinary people because we are celebrities?”
Hence I don’t know why Mercy’s picture and that of her daughter, Purity, on a train in Lagos would be an issue. Why would people question her boarding a train in Lagos and not London or Paris?
It is funny that people would say this because the train she boarded looks clean to me. At least, I saw the pictures. The people she sat beside with her daughter are not looking dirty or unkempt in any way. The train is one of the new ones President Jonathan commissioned, so what is wrong with that? It is not of one the old haggard looking ones we used to see more than twenty years ago where twenty people would be sitting while more than forty would be standing.
I had once been on a fully loaded train in Paris. I was amazed at how jam packed a train could be during rush hour in Paris. I wrote about the experience in a piece I titled: ‘In the belly of the earth’ on this page a few years ago. Here is an excerpt from the piece:
“We were all surprised at the possibility of having an overloaded Metro in a country like Paris, a city in the heart of Europe. We thought that was only possible in Africa. A continent synonymous with every negative thing you can think of. However, that was not the only negative thing we discover about Europe. Nadine had earlier warned us to be careful with our bags. There are bag snatchers and pick-pockets, is it pick-bags now, in Paris.
“On a typical Metro, like the Danfos and Molues that we have in Nigeria, there were all kinds of people with diverse faces and needs. There were beggars who beg for money, there were those who play musical instruments for money. On one particular day, we ran into a young boy with needle marks all over his arm. He was begging for money to eat. According to him, he could not get money from government to feed himself and he was unable to get a job. His story was interesting for me because I felt he was still very young and should have been in school. Obviously, the needle marks on his arms showed he had been into drug. Nobody made any attempt to give him money except an old woman who dropped a coin into his palm.”
However, the kind of train that Mercy and her daughter boarded that day was devoid of the above scenario. Boarding a train in Lagos does not reduce Mercy’s status in anyway rather it has added to it. For me, it shows how real she is. She is not pretentious about who she is. Being a Nollywood star does not make her a demi-god. She needs to feel the pulse of the ordinary people with whom she once was before stardom took her to a higher level. If she takes a train ride in USA, UK, France or anywhere in Europe why can’t she do that here?
This quote from her press statement sums it all up:
“In as much as I understand the concept of branding, packaging and exclusiveness, I will never trade the experience to sit, interact and feel the pulse of so-called ordinary people.
By the way, I am part of the ordinary people. I grew up as an ordinary person among ordinary people. Why would I avoid them now? Would that be because I am now famous? Without these ordinary people, how would I have been famous in the first place? Without the so called ordinary people, where would Nigeria’s growing population of so-called well packaged celebrities be today?”
FUNKE OSAE-BROWN