After events spiralled on Monday to leave Theresa May as the last Tory standing, The Shimmering Ostrich can exclusively reveal that May’s first act as Prime Minister come Wednesday will be to crack down on the work of the Nigerian highlife musician Prince Nico Mbarga. Mbarga, recording with his band Rocafil Jazz, released the song ‘Sweet Mother’ all the way back in 1976.
A celebration of motherhood, sung in Nigerian Pidgin to the swaying accompaniment of a finger-picked guitar, ‘Sweet Mother’ has sometimes been described as Nigeria’s alternative national anthem, while in 2004 BBC readers and listeners voted it Africa’s very favourite track. ‘Sweet mother I no go forget you’, begin the lyrics, ‘for the suffer wey you suffer for me’.
Still smarting from the comments made over the weekend by her fallen Conservative leadership rival Andrea Leadsom – who claimed that the experience of motherhood made her a better candidate for PM – May is evidently keen to elide overt expressions of motherhood from the public conversation, lest the ugly debate re-rear its misshapen head.
While May adopted a pidgin of her own in Birmingham on Monday morning, flexing her tongue and contorting her lips to speak a compassionate conservative message of conciliation towards the working class, it is clear that at least in this instance she will not abide the musical preferences of Britain’s sizeable African community, who she would anyway much prefer to deport.
This is not the first time May has tangled with a Nigerian, as in 2013 she was accused of forcibly deporting a dying 45-year-old following a 100-day hunger strike. Prince Nico Mbarga is at least no threat to Britain’s delicate borders, having died in 1997 in a motorcycle accident. But thanks to May, at least within the increasingly clammy confines of Britain, his legacy is sure not to live on.
