By Tosin Adeoti
When Bokku Mart posted that ad, the one where the influencer smiled into the camera and joked about shopping “without any Omo Igbo cheating me”, it was a mirror held up to a country that has grown too comfortable with prejudice.
People were rightly outraged. Of course, the influencer apologised and Bokku Mart deleted the video. But the damage had already been done. The slur had slipped out not as a slip of the tongue but as a reflection of a mindset that had passed through layers of approval. From the influencer’s script to the marketing team to the senior management to the brand’s social media managers.
Nobody thought it was wrong.
That, right there, is the problem.
The real question is not why a brand said something offensive. It’s why everyone along the chain of approval thought it was fine to say it.
Because this didn’t happen in a vacuum.
We got here the moment bigotry became normalised from the top. It began when public figures, people elected or appointed to represent millions, could publicly speak ethnic hate and suffer no consequences.
In 2019, Senator Remi Tinubu, now First Lady, was captured on video saying what many found deeply offensive. She told a crowd that Igbos were “ungrateful” and that Yoruba people would “overcome them and inherit their properties in Lagos.”
Not long after, in 2023, Bayo Onanuga, a senior media aide to Bola Tinubu’s campaign, doubled down on similar rhetoric. “I am first a Yoruba before being Nigerian,” he tweeted, insisting that the Igbos were an “existential threat” to the Yoruba people. When criticised, he refused to apologise.
And what happened when these two statements were? Nothing. No sanctions. No reprimand. No symbolic disapproval from those in power. The comments were treated as political talk, something to move on from.
But here’s the thing about leadership: it doesn’t just manage policy, it shapes culture. When leaders cross moral lines without consequence, they redraw those lines for everyone else. Or were we not around in 2023 during the elections when ethnic bigotry was fuelled by the political class to incite and disincentivize voting?
So, that’s how a slur like “Omo Igbo” ended up in a supermarket advert in 2025. The people approving that ad were not monsters. They were ordinary Nigerians. But in a society where prejudice has become part of casual conversation, bigotry begins to sound like marketing creativity.
Once you normalise hate in politics, it trickles down into pop culture, and eventually, everyday interactions.
Suddenly, jokes about “Igbos cheating” or “Yoruba laziness” or “Hausa backwardness” start to sound harmless, even funny. Until one day, someone uses them to justify exclusion or violence.
And this is not unique to any tribe. Every group in Nigeria carries its share of prejudice. But there’s a difference between what people say privately among friends and what society allows to be said publicly with applause.
That difference is what separates civility from chaos.
Nigeria has walked this path before. In the 1960s, political rhetoric drenched in ethnic suspicion helped ignite the crisis that led to civil war. Look into the archives and you’d be shocked to see newspapers carrying headlines about “Igbo domination” in the North and “Yoruba betrayal” in the East. Words became fuel, and soon, fuel became fire. By 1967, the nation was burning.
Fifty years later, we like to think we have outgrown such divisions. But the truth is, we have only learned to dress them up.
Our social media has become the new marketplace of prejudice — hashtags replacing war songs, tweets replacing pamphlets. Tribal baiting now hides behind jokes and memes. The tone is lighter, but the poison is the same.
After the Bokku ad went viral, the reaction split the internet. On one hand were Nigerians, across ethnic lines, condemning the video as wrong and divisive. On the other hand, came the defenders, mostly supporters of the current government, who felt their “own” were under attack.
“Support Bokku Mart,” some tweeted. “The Jews support Jewish businesses. The Arabs support Arabs. We must defend ours.”
Overnight, the boycott became free publicity. From what I read, Bokku Mart gained thousands of followers. Shoppers queued for its bread and groceries. The slur that should have humbled a brand ended up boosting its visibility.
It’s an irony that says a lot about who we are becoming; a people more loyal to tribe than to truth.
The difference between a civil society and a dangerous one lies in how it reacts to its own ugliness. Mature democracies understand this, which is why public figures who make racist or bigoted remarks are expected to resign or apologise. This is not necessarily because everyone believes in their sincerity, but because the act itself reaffirms a moral boundary.
Those rituals matter. They remind society that certain things are never acceptable, no matter who says them.
Nigeria desperately needs that line again.
When brands like Bokku cross it or when politicians erase it, it falls to ordinary citizens like us to redraw it. To insist that we can disagree politically or culturally without resorting to ethnic hate.
The true test of Nigeria’s unity is not in singing the anthem together during Super Eagles matches or flying the same flag during Independence Day celebrations. It is in whether we can resist the temptation to dehumanise one another in moments of anger.
The Bokku case should never have happened, but now that it has, it must serve as a national reminder that bigotry is not culture. It’s cowardice disguised as pride.
And no matter how many followers it wins you on social media, it will always make the country poorer.
Because a nation cannot prosper when its people see each other as enemies.