ANALYSIS: How Linda Ikeji demystified herself with baby daddy revelation

By Parrot Nigeria On Dec 14, 2018 0

For the longest time, Linda Ikeji found a balance between revealing little details about her personal life and creating salacious content about other people’s personal life and business.

Through her blog, Ikeji controls her own narrative by revealing what she wants to reveal about herself in her own time and in a way that best suits her. She rarely, if ever, grants interview to other media houses — essentially maintaining an impregnable air of mystery around her.

However, this hasn’t shielded Ikeji from a fair amount of controversy as every announcement about her personal life is met, on some level or the other, with virtual hullabaloo. Bit by bit, though, this mystery about Ikeji is peeling away as she continues to undo herself.

When Ikeji does talk about herself, her messages are often aspirational and motivational: on one hand talking about her wealth, on the other seemly inspiring young girls to work harder.

In seeking to maintain her brand as a self-made, virtuous woman, a role model and advocate for young girls, Ikeji has somehow steeped herself in the dangerously thin line between hypocrisy and unnecessary openness.

For while it is completely understandable that she’d want to clear the air on how she met and was dumped by her baby daddy: Sholaye Jeremi, it only manages to dig her further into the treacherous grounds of hypocrisy marinated in a holier-than-thou outlook – one that completely bellies and distracts from her message/intention.

Silence has long been a useful weapon. It can be powerful and empowering if strategically deployed.

By raising the roof about her sex life, answering questions that she wasn’t asked, Ikeji continually convolutes the public’s opinion while contemporaneously casting doubt on her message to girls. And even though she might claim not to be bothered by people’s opinion, it is obvious that the opinion does affect her.

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What is most worrisome here is that while Ikeji, on one hand, says her message is for young girls. Her detractors on the other say her message is confusing, if not outright falsehood, for young girls.

Woke Nigeria has little love for Linda Ikeji — so much so that the only thing woke Twitter and politically incorrect Twitter have in common is a mutual distaste for the famous blogger.

When the ducks are in a row, it is nearly impossible for some to empathise with Ikeji, who built a career and, ultimately, a media empire by generating virtual, often vile and needless, hullabaloo about other people’s personal baggage.

At this point, really, it is unambitious to state that Ikeji is perhaps the most disliked Nigerian woman on Twitter, perhaps, even beyond.

But this is hardly surprising if one were to objectively reason and accept that Ikeji’s core readers have no patience for woke, often faux, intellectuals waxing lyrical on the internet either.

Her audience, to whom she curates and creates content for and who are so easily dismissed by the woke crowd, are a world apart from wokeness and political correctness.

Perhaps, Ikeji fancies herself the African version of Oprah Winfrey, the American media mogul who built an eponymous media empire – and just like Ikeji, whose eponymous media business is driven by her personality and face.

But while Winfrey has found a way to strategically communicate and endear herself to the public, Ikeji keeps pushing a section away from her brand.

Meanwhile, here are some Twitter reactions in the wake of her revelations.