From Moral Panic to Water and Garri

Editor’s note: This essay is available in our print issue, The Age of Afrobeats. Buy the issue here.

Alongside her widespread exposure and acclaim, Tiwa Savage’s success as a mainstream artist within a male-dominated industry and society has been laced with moral panic from her audience. Such moral panic is worth revisiting because it brings into focus the alarming ways that Nigerian society views the bodily autonomy of women artists and entertainers.

In 2013, Tiwa Savage released a music video for the ‘Wanted’ single from her debut album, Once Upon a Time. In the Moe Musa-directed video, Tiwa Savage can be seen wearing a nude body suit, which caused widespread shock and controversy at the time. Nigerian media outlets described the video as ‘raunchy’, and a Nigerian housewife wrote an open letter to Tiwa Savage, therefore highlighting the hysteria and moral panic that the video caused within the Nigerian pop cultural landscape of 2013. In the letter, the housewife mentioned that prior to the ‘Wanted’ video, Tiwa was ‘perceived as an ambassador of the youth,’ and by releasing such a provocative video, she had tarnished her reputation. The letter also went on to call the video a ‘mistake’, insinuating that it was a piece of work that Tiwa Savage should be ashamed of or apologize for. Although such a response appears to be quite hyperbolic and overdramatic today, it was nothing short of expected at the time.

The negative comments about Tiwa Savage’s ‘Wanted’ video emphasized a wider general consensus, whereby the sexual autonomy and freedom of women made Nigerian people and the Nigerian media disproportionately uncomfortable, particularly when such displays were made by Nigerian women such as Tiwa Savage, as opposed to Western artists. At the time, there was a misconception that women revealing too much of their skin was solely done in the West. In the mid to early 2000s, while Western popstars wore mini-skirts, tank tops and bikinis in their music videos, Nigerian women artists were still expected to uphold an illusion of conservatism and purity through their musical work, due to fear of being ridiculed and critiqued if they chose to go against society’s expectations of them. Through the ‘Wanted’ music video, Tiwa Savage not only shattered this illusion, but she equally laid a foundation for younger women artists, such as Ayra Starr, to do the same. This is demonstrated through Ayra Starr’s musical discography which includes songs, such as ‘Cast’, where Ayra Starr sings that she wants to be herself ‘with no shame.’ It is further highlighted through Ayra Starr’s fashion choices, which are heavily inspired by early 2000s fashion, consisting of micro mini-skirts and tank tops that are ironically similar to the looks which Nigerians and the Nigerian media in the early to mid-2000s viewed as solely reserved for Western artists...