The Darey Concert: Paying Millions For The Presence Of A Porn Star - By Wale Odunsi

Okay I hardly comment on entertainment and showbiz news. I prefer to stay on the national issues/political terrain which are my jurisdiction. However, I could not hold back the temptation to do a piece on Darey’s ‘Love Like A Movie’ concert.No doubt, the LLAM held in Lagos was superb; star-studded, proper management, lights, sounds et al. In fact not a few have adjudged the show the best of its type in recent years. The ovation and positive review was not unexpected considering the artiste involved. Dude is good-looking, knows his onions, greatly talented and business oriented.

About a week to the D-day, news went viral that renowned Reality TV girl, Kim Kardashian, will be in the country as a co-host of the event. At 8:20pm of Saturday, February 16, 2013, she flew in.Trust Nigerian blogs, before her arrival, no other news existed. Even major news tabloids caught the bug. At least for three straight days, it was Kim this, Kim that.I have no beef about that. I am certain the organizers splashed plenty six or seven figures that sorta hype. And for the publicists, heavens once again beamed a wide grin at them; they must have smiled to the banks, perhaps their closets, depending on where they keep their monies.After every every, Kanye West's heartrob and baby-mama to be, left the shores of Naija just when the concert was about to start. Initially I thought she developed flu and had to quickly jet out. Soon after, I learnt she was actually invited to do what I like to tag ‘Cameo’ (a short appearance by a popular figure in a music video).

At the Eko Hotels venue, the Kim simply posed for pictures with some of our local and a few international champions who clearly were star-struck; you could see it in their eyes and on their foreheads. I even spotted the wife of former Cross River governor, Onari Duke with her.LLAM number one guest was kind enough to open the show, spending a total forty seconds on stage. That was it…Chikena! In all, she was there for three-quarter of sixty minutes. By 10:20pm Sunday night, she was aboard a plane back home.The major (if not only) flaw of that outing was the presence of Kim. If it is true that she was paid hundreds of thousands of Benjamins (aka US Dollars), it would indeed be appalling. 

 We are talking about someone who shot her way to the limelight via the now infamous sex-tape which anyone can still download on the internet for free! So for the sake of money, we’ve sent our morals, decency and integrity on vacation.Just few weeks ago, Miss Kardashian-West was paid $200,000 for a trip to Ivory Coast. She then proceeded to donate a meager $2,000 to a local orphanage, an amount less than one percent of her total financial terms (including flight, hotel and security charge).Obviously Darey and his team wanted a name that would pull the crowd out of their homes. 

Question: Was that the best they could come up with? Whatever happened to female celebs known for their and hard work and larger than life persona:  Alicia Keys, India Arie, Adele among many others.As a humanitarian, it is sheer stupidity to think that a clique forming big boys would dole out all that money for below-an-hour attendance of an actress whose only movie to her credit is a pornographic motion picture. It would have made more sense if she stayed throughout the event, to at least justify the huge amount spend on her appearance.Charles Novia rightly noted and I wish to re-echo his statement: There was absolutely no need for Kim Kardashian at Darey’s concert.