Nigerian comedian Basketmouth tours Europe

DW (English)

45-year-old Nigerian standup comedy star Basketmouth made a stop in Berlin on his European tour to thrill the crowd with his socio-political commentary on a range of topics — including his country's ongoing currency crisis.

Transcript

00:00 Oh, man.

00:01 Well, that country is tough.

00:03 Do you know that they sell egg, 300 Naira for one egg?

00:06 Oh, you didn't know?

00:10 Egg, 300, egg, small egg.

00:14 Did the chicken lay that egg in a hospital?

00:19 Was it CS?

00:20 I don't understand.

00:21 Scalpels?

00:22 Or bring the egg out, yeah, this is 300.

00:27 How did things get this bad?

00:30 You can be forgiven if you think this is Lagos, Nigeria's commercial capital.

00:36 It is Berlin's Babylon Cinema, some 7,500 kilometers away, where Nigerian stand-up comedian

00:43 Basket Mouth, birth name Bright Opocha, is on the first stop of his European tour.

00:50 How many people travel for Christmas?

00:53 Christmas, you went to Christmas?

00:57 You guys were happy, I mean, took advantage of that fallen Naira.

01:01 You know Naira now is, one euro is one eight.

01:06 One thousand eight hundred, yes.

01:08 One nine now, it only is 2K.

01:13 Basket Mouth has been a stand-up comedian for 25 years.

01:17 He is a star in the African comedy scene, where he regularly fills holes while often

01:22 talking about difficult subjects in a digestible way.

01:26 There's a lot of people out there, we've got a lot of people out there in my home country

01:31 that can't be heard.

01:33 So they feel the pain, but they can't speak up because they don't have the platform or

01:37 the medium to do so.

01:39 So what I do is that since I have these platforms, I want to use it positively, I want to use

01:44 it wisely, I want to use it for, to pass a message.

01:47 And that's why even though I'm doing comedy, I try as much as possible to plug in messages

01:52 in there.

01:53 So that's my own way of spreading knowledge, awareness, and for us to understand what we're

01:59 dealing with, in a friendly way, with satire and all that.

02:03 As African pop culture continues to spread worldwide, African comedy is a format that

02:08 still has room for growth.

02:10 It is, but also open into like, just looking into places, that's why he's here.

02:17 And I think we have a huge black community and apart from music, comedy is another thing

02:22 that we can actually look into.

02:24 I would say, yes, that he did a very good job to simplify all that is happening and

02:29 then, you know, create humor out of it for us to just have fun.

02:32 It feels like home.

02:33 Then for most parts, we Nigerians, Africans, it's actually rare to see us together in a

02:40 place at the same time.

02:41 But today, a whole lot of us came out to see him, to witness his talent and it was fun.

02:48 I was also a little afraid that it would be in pigeon English, but I'm happy that it wasn't

02:53 and it was hilarious.

02:55 I'm so happy that I was here.

02:57 So while Basket Mouth is finding tragicomedy in economic hardship, his fans can only hope

03:04 that the Nigerian economy discovers untapped potential, just like African comedy.

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