Etcetera Goes Political On New Single

By Victoria Ige

For soft-rock singer Etcetera, this is not the time for another love song.

With all happening in Nigeria: the president is sick and hospitalised in a Saudi Arabia hospital; political assasinations are happening under the watch of a helpless Police force; religious crises are threatening to tear the nation apart; political godfathers are making states almost ungovernable; young graduates are suffering from unemployment and underemployment; their parents faced with retrenchment without compensation – what better time for artistes to speak up and use their voices to seek positive change and instititional action?

X3M music act Etcetera’s new single, which leaked on the internet last week, asks us all to ‘ring the alarm’, because ‘there’s a thief in the government house’. Etcetera, known mostly for his love hits ‘Hello’ and ‘Michelle’ tells NET he understands ‘the power’ of music, ‘and I think the responsible thing to do, as musicians who have a voice, is to speak up and use our art to shape our society’.

Nigeria is home to over 150 million people; most of whom live below-the-average lives, while most of their elected leaders share money in heavy sacks, buy properties all over the world and steal as if it’s going out of fashion. Regular armed robbery, election rigging, religious riots, contract inflation, abandoned contracts, political assasinations, bribery, kidnapping, high-level fraud and outright banditry are some of the monsters holding Nigeria down.

‘There’s corruption everywhere, leaders are acting as if Nigeria is thier personal property. They don’t care about you and I. And now that 2011 is arond the corner, they’re campaigning again. We need to ring the alarm now, so we all understand what we’re dealing with and see how we can get ourselves out of this mess’.

He is also the author of ‘Biafra – land of a rising sun’ – the controversial but right-on-point single that brought back memories of the Biafran war. Etcetera is Ibo, from Umuaka in Njaba Local government area of in Imo State – and just like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of Half of A Yellow Sun, Etcetera was only a baby when the Biafra war raged and left a scar in the hearts and homes of the Igbo. Many families never recovered.

‘War is not a good thing’, Etcetera told NET early Friday, as he chatted with a few youngsters about the situation of the country, and why ‘we all need to make Nigeria better’.

Is this the full direction his upcoming second album will take? ‘Absolutely no’, Etcetera says. ‘I’ll talk about different stuff on the album; as you can see, my other single ‘Third Eye Blind’ which was recently released, talks about something else – breaking stereotypes’.

He tells NET ‘ring the alarm’ will be officially released ‘next week’.