Mercy Aigbe’s red dress, ‘This is Nigeria’… top entertainment controversies of 2018

This year has its fair share of dramas and controversy. We look back at some of the most remarkable ones.

Here are the top 10 controversies of 2018:

One red dress, one trouble

To celebrate her 40th birthday, actress Mercy Aigbe shared pictures from a photoshoot in which she was wearing a sheer red gown made by designer, Rikaotobyme.

Turns out that the said red gown was actually made and paid for by a bride for her wedding day but the designer gave the dress to an unwitting Mercy Aigbe.

What followed was a protracted social media storm.

Who’s your daddy?

Wizkid’s baby mama, Sola Ogudu, took to social media to call out the Afropop star for failing in his duty as a father to their son.

But if there was still any doubt that Wizzy might be a deadbeat dad or a terrible parent, his second baby mama, Binta Diallo, also called him out for failing to pay for child support.

And although no one, apart from the parties directly involved, knows the truth, people however weighed in on the issue.

But either way, Wizkid continues to do what Wizkid does best as a response to controversy: keep silent and work harder.

Utter loose talks

‘Loose Talk Podcast’ hosted by entertainment editor, Osagie Alonge, Ayomide Tayo, and Steve Dede, is an exciting wild west show, but mostly educating and enlightening and, sometimes, inane.

Episode 135 of the podcast was one of the inane ones as the show’s host took personal, unobjective jabs at Teni The Entertainer and Wizkid.

The hosts eventually issued an apology after the episode caused an uproar.

This is MURIC

Following the release of his viral project, This is Nigeria, Falz found himself facing off with The Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) who gave him a seven-day ultimatum to take down the video.

The video of the socio-conscious song, according to MURIC, was a terrible portrayal of Muslims.

The ‘Jogodo’ affair

Middle of the year, Tekno released a catchy single, Jogodo, which was similar to a song released in the 2000s by musical duo, Danfo Drivers.

The duo accused Tekno of illegally using their song. However, they would go on to reconcile with Tekno.

The Tomi Adeyemi situation

Just this December, Nigerian-American bestselling author, Tomi Adeyemi, woke up and threw a fit in one tweet.

She accused another best-selling American author, Nora Roberts, of shamelessly ripping off her book’s title.

Coincidentally, Adeyemi and Roberts’ book titles share some similarity – which, as it does, many other books also have a similar headline.

Olamide’s blurry line

It appears that Olamide lives for three things: giving us groovy songs that become anthems; getting his music banned; and walking a blurred line between endorsing, praising and criticising bad stuff.

Just this year, two of his songs have generated much controversies for the reasons outlined above.

First was Science Student and then, recently, Logo Benz. Both make deep morally questionable assertions. The former was eventually banned by government regulatory agency, the later, if we judge from precedent, might probably be banned.

Small Doctor, big guns

Small Doctor, apparently, isn’t small at all.

The musician reportedly threatened a police officer with a gun at a checkpoint in Oshodi, Lagos.

He was arrested (and eventually released) by the Lagos State Police Command.

Wizzy-Tiwa fever

For more than 48 hours straight, Wizkid’s music video for his song, Fever, featuring pop star, Tiwa Savage, gave the internet fodder to chew on.

The issue flowed offline as people debated the nature of the relationship between both stars.